James Watt
James Watt, FRS, FRSE (/wɒt/; 19 January 1736 – 25 August 1819)[1] was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. ACER TravelMate 2501LC Laptop Keyboard
While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology ofsteam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and re-heating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, SONY 148084122 Laptop Keyboard
which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. Eventually he adapted his engine to produce rotary motion, greatly broadening its use beyond pumping water. ASUS F6VE Laptop Keyboard
Watt attempted to commercialise his invention, but experienced great financial difficulties until he entered a partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775. The new firm of Boulton and Watt was eventually highly successful and Watt became a wealthy man. HP Mini 210-1014TU Laptop Keyboard
In his retirement, Watt continued to develop new inventions though none were as significant as his steam engine work. He died in 1819 at the age of 83. Watt has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.[2]
He developed the concept of horsepower[3] and the SI unit of power, the watt, was named after him. DELL Precision M4500 Laptop Keyboard
James Watt was born on 19 January 1736 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, a seaport on the Firth of Clyde.[4] His father was a shipwright, ship owner and contractor, and served as the town's chief baillie,[5] while his mother, Agnes Muirhead, ACER Aspire 7741G Laptop Keyboard
came from a distinguished family and was well educated. Both were Presbyterians and strong Covenanters.[6] Watt's grandfather, Thomas Watt, was a mathematics teacher and baillieto the Baron of Cartsburn.[7] Despite being raised by religious parents, he later on became a deist.[8][9]
Watt did not attend school regularly; HP AELX6U00210 Laptop Keyboard
initially he was mostly schooled at home by his mother but later he attended Greenock Grammar School.[10] He exhibited great manual dexterity, engineering skills and an aptitude for mathematics, while Latin and Greek failed to interest him. COMPAQ Presario C700 Laptop Keyboard
When he was eighteen, his mother died and his father's health began to fail. Watt travelled to London to study instrument-making for a year, then returned to Scotland, settling in the major commercial city of Glasgow intent on setting up his own instrument-making business. He made and repaired brass reflecting quadrants, DELL Vostro 1014 Laptop Keyboard
parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes, and barometers, among other things. Because he had not served at least seven years as an apprentice, the Glasgow Guild of Hammermen (which had jurisdiction over any artisans using hammers) blocked his application,[11] despite there being no other mathematical instrument makers in Scotland.[12] SONY 148084122 Laptop Keyboard
Watt was saved from this impasse by the arrival of astronomical instruments at the University of Glasgow, instruments that required expert attention.[13]Watt restored them to working order and was remunerated. DELL Vostro 3450 Laptop Keyboard
These instruments were eventually installed in the Macfarlane Observatory. Subsequently three professors offered him the opportunity to set up a small workshop within the university. It was initiated in 1757 and two of the professors, thephysicist and chemist Joseph Black as well as the famed Adam Smith, became Watt's friends.[14] ACER V104730BS1 Laptop Keyboard
At first he worked on maintaining and repairing scientific instruments used in the university, helping with demonstrations, and expanding the production of quadrants. In 1759 he formed a partnership with John Craig, an architect and businessman, to manufacture and sell a line of products including musical instruments and toys. HP CT1A Laptop Keyboard
This partnership lasted for the next six years, and employed up to sixteen workers. Craig died in 1765. One employee, Alex Gardner, eventually took over the business, which lasted into the twentieth century.[15] HP Pavilion dv3-2106tu Laptop Keyboard
In 1764, Watt married his cousin Margaret (Peggy) Miller, with whom he had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood: James Jr. (1769–1848) and Margaret (1767–1796). His wife died in childbirth in 1772. In 1777 he was married again, HP COMPAQ NX6325 Laptop Keyboard
to Ann MacGregor, daughter of a Glasgow dye-maker, with whom he had two children: Gregory (1777–1804), who became a geologist and mineralogist,[16] and Janet (1779–1794). Ann died in 1832. Between 1777 and 1790 he lived in Regent Place, Birmingham[17] DELL Vostro 1015 Laptop Keyboard
In 1759 Watt's friend, John Robison, called his attention to the use of steam as a source of motive power.[18] The design of theNewcomen engine, in use for almost 50 years for pumping water from mines, had hardly changed from its first implementation. Watt began to experiment with steam though he had never seen an operating steam engine. Compaq Presario CQ57 Series Laptop Keyboard
He tried constructing a model. It failed to work satisfactorily, but he continued his experiments and began to read everything he could about the subject. He came to realize the importance of latent heat in understanding the engine, which, unknown to Watt, his friend, Joseph Black, had previously discovered some years before. HP Pavilion DV7-3188cl laptop keyboard
Understanding of the steam engine was in a very primitive state, for the science of thermodynamics was not in place for another 100 years or so.
In 1763, Watt was asked to repair a model Newcomen engine belonging to the university.[18] Even after repair, this engine only barely worked. SONY Vaio VGN-AW310J laptop keyboard
After much experimentation, Watt demonstrated that about three-quarters of the heat of the steam was being wasted - consumed in heating the engine cylinder on every cycle.[19] This energy was wasted because later in the cycle, Lenovo ThinkPad T400S-2815 laptop keyboard
cold water was injected into the cylinder to condense the steam to reduce its pressure. Thus the engine expended much of its energy in repeatedly heating the cylinder rather than in delivering mechanical force. HP AELX6U00210 laptop keyboard
Watt's critical insight, arrived at in May 1765,[20] was to cause the steam to condense in a separate chamber apart from the piston, and to maintain the temperature of the cylinder at the same temperature as the injected steam (by surrounding it with a "steam jacket").[19] TOSHIBA Satellite L40-17U laptop keyboard
This meant that very little heat was absorbed into the cylinder itself on each cycle, and thus more heat from the steam was made available to perform useful work. Watt had a working model later that same year. SONY VAIO VGN-FS760/W laptop keyboard
Despite a potentially workable design, there were still substantial difficulties in constructing a full-scale engine. This required more capital, some of which came from Black. More substantial backing came from John Roebuck, ACER V104730BS1 laptop keyboard
the founder of the celebrated Carron Iron Works, near Falkirk, with whom he now formed a partnership. Roebuck lived at Kinneil House in Bo'ness, during which time Watt worked at perfecting his steam engine, in a cottage adjacent to the house. The shell of the cottage, and a very large part of one of his projects, still exist to the rear.[21] ACER Aspire 7751G laptop keyboard
The principal difficulty was in machining the piston and cylinder. Iron workers of the day were more likeblacksmiths than modern machinists and were unable to produce the components with sufficient precision. Much capital was spent in pursuing the ground-breaking patent on Watt's invention. Strapped for resources, Watt was forced to take up employment first as a surveyor, then as a civil engineer for eight years.[22] Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
Roebuck went bankrupt, and Matthew Boulton, who owned the Soho Foundry works near Birmingham, acquired his patent rights. An extension of the patent to 1800 was successfully obtained in 1775.[23] TOSHIBA PK130BH2A00 laptop keyboard
Through Boulton, Watt finally had access to some of the best ironworkers in the world. The difficulty of the manufacture of a large cylinder with a tightly fitting piston was solved by John Wilkinson who had developed precision boring techniques for cannon making at Bersham, near Wrexham, North Wales. Watt and Boulton formed a hugely successful partnership (Boulton and Watt) which lasted for the next twenty-five years. TOSHIBA MP-09K53US6698 laptop keyboard
In 1776, the first engines were installed and working in commercial enterprises. These first engines were used to power pumps and produced only reciprocating motion to move the pump rods at the bottom of the shaft. The design was commercially successful, and for the next five years Watt was very busy installing more engines, mostly in Cornwallfor pumping water out of mines. Compaq Presario CQ35 laptop keyboard
These early engines were not manufactured by Boulton and Watt, but were made by others according to drawings made by Watt, who served in the role of consulting engineer. The erection of the engine and its shakedown was supervised by Watt, at first, and then by men in the firm's employ. These were large machines. ACER Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Laptop Keyboard
The first, for example, had a cylinder with a diameter of some 50 inches and an overall height of about 24 feet, and required the construction of a dedicated building to house it. Boulton and Watt charged an annual payment, equal to one third of the value of the coal saved in comparison to a Newcomen engine performing the same work. HP G62-361TX Laptop Keyboard
The field of application for the invention was greatly widened when Boulton urged Watt to convert the reciprocating motion of the piston to produce rotational power for grinding, weaving and milling. Although a crank seemed the obvious solution to the conversion Watt and Boulton were stymied by a patent for this, whose holder, DELL Vostro 3550 Laptop Keyboard
James Pickard, and associates proposed to cross-license the external condenser. Watt adamantly opposed this and they circumvented the patent by their sun and planet gear in 1781.
Over the next six years, he made a number of other improvements and modifications to the steam engine. A double acting engine, in which the steam acted alternately on the two sides of the piston was one. He described methods for working the steam "expansively" (i.e., ACER TravelMate 290 Laptop Keyboard
using steam at pressures well above atmospheric). A compound engine, which connected two or more engines was described. Two more patents were granted for these in 1781 and 1782. Numerous other improvements that made for easier manufacture and installation were continually implemented. One of these included the use of the steam indicatorwhich produced an informative plot of the pressure in the cylinder against its volume, Lenovo 63Y0047 Laptop Keyboard
which he kept as a trade secret. Another important invention, one which Watt was most proud of, was the parallel motion which was essential in double-acting engines as it produced the straight line motion required for the cylinder rod and pump, from the connected rocking beam, whose end moves in a circular arc. This was patented in 1784. DELL NSK-D8001 Laptop Keyboard
A throttle valve to control the power of the engine, and a centrifugal governor, patented in 1788,[24] to keep it from "running away" were very important. These improvements taken together produced an engine which was up to five times as efficient in its use of fuel as the Newcomen engine. SONY VGN-FE21M Laptop Keyboard
Because of the danger of exploding boilers, which were in a very primitive stage of development, and the ongoing issues with leaks, Watt restricted his use of high pressure steam – all of his engines used steam at near atmospheric pressure. TOSHIBA V114302CS1 US laptop keyboard
Edward Bull started constructing engines for Boulton and Watt in Cornwall in 1781. By 1792 he had started making engines of his own design, but which contained a separate condenser, and so infringed Watt's patents. IBM Lenovo ThinkPad X301 laptop keyboard
Two brothers,Jabez Carter Hornblower and Jonathan Hornblower Jnr also started to build engines about the same time. Others began to modify Newcomen engines by adding a condenser, and the mine owners in Cornwall became convinced that Watt's patent could not be enforced. SONY VAIO VGN-FZ21Z laptop keyboard
They started to withhold payments due to Boulton and Watt, which by 1795 had fallen. Of the total £21,000 (£1,840,000 as of 2014) owed, only £2,500 had been received. Watt was forced to go to court to enforce his claims.[25] SONY VAIO VGN-NR21S/S laptop keyboard
He first sued Bull in 1793. The jury found for Watt, but the question of whether or not the original specification of the patent was valid was left to another trial. In the meantime, injunctions were issued against the infringers, SONY VGN-FE31B laptop keyboard
forcing their payments of the royalties to be placed in escrow. The trial on determining the validity of the specifications which was held in the following year was inconclusive, but the injunctions remained in force and the infringers, Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
except for Jonathan Hornblower, all began to settle their cases. Hornblower was soon brought to trial and the verdict of the four judges (in 1799) was decisively in favour of Watt. Their friend John Wilkinson, who had solved the problem of boring an accurate cylinder, SONY VAIO VGN-CR41S laptop keyboard
was a particularly grievous case. He had erected about twenty engines without Boulton's and Watts' knowledge. They finally agreed to settle the infringement in 1796.[26] Boulton and Watt never collected all that was owed them, DELL Vostro PP38L laptop keyboard
but the disputes were all settled directly between the parties or through arbitration. These trials were extremely costly in both money and time, but ultimately were successful for the firm. HP Mini 210-2002er laptop keyboard
Before 1780 there was no good method for making copies of letters or drawings. The only method sometimes used was a mechanical one using linked multiple pens. Watt at first experimented with improving this method, SONY VAIO VGN-FW11S laptop keyboard
but soon gave up on this approach because it was so cumbersome. He instead decided to try to physically transfer some ink from the front of the original to the back of another sheet, moistened with a solvent, and pressed to the original. The second sheet had to be thin, so that the ink could be seen through it when the copy was held up to the light, thus reproducing the original exactly.[27][28] HP Pavilion dv6-3134nr laptop keyboard
Watt started to develop the process in 1779, and made many experiments to formulate the ink, select the thin paper, to devise a method for wetting the special thin paper, and to make a press suitable for applying the correct pressure to effect the transfer. COMPAQ Presario CQ61-300 laptop keyboard
All of these required much experimentation, but he soon had enough success to patent the process a year later. Watt formed another partnership with Boulton (who provided financing) and James Keir(to manage the business) in a firm called James Watt and Co. HP Mini 110-1197TU laptop keyboard
The perfection of the invention required much more development work before it could be routinely used by others, but this was carried out over the next few years. Boulton and Watt gave up their shares to their sons in 1794.[29] It became a commercial success and was widely used in offices even into the twentieth century. TOSHIBA G83C0003G110 laptop keyboard
Chemical experiments
From an early age Watt was very interested in chemistry. In late 1786, while in Paris, he witnessed an experiment by Berthollet in which he reactedhydrochloric acid with manganese dioxide to produce chlorine. He had already found that an aqueous solution of chlorine could bleach textiles, and had published his findings, HP Pavilion dv6-3230us laptop keyboard
which aroused great interest among many potential rivals. When Watt returned to Britain, he began experiments along these lines with hopes of finding a commercially viable process. He discovered that a mixture of salt, Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
manganese dioxide and sulfuric acid could produce chlorine, which Watt believed might be a cheaper method. He passed the chlorine into a weak solution of alkali, and obtained a turbid solution that appeared to have good bleaching properties. He soon communicated these results to James McGrigor, his father-in-law, who was a bleacher in Glasgow. Otherwise he tried to keep his method a secret.[30] DELL NSK-D8001 laptop keyboard
With McGrigor and his wife Annie, he started to scale up the process, and in March 1788, McGrigor was able to bleach 1500 yards of cloth to his satisfaction. About this time Berthollet discovered the salt and sulphuric acid process, and published it so it became public knowledge. Many others began to experiment with improving the process, SONY VGN-FE21M laptop keyboard
which still had many shortcomings, not the least of which was the problem of transporting the liquid product. Watt's rivals soon overtook him in developing the process, and he dropped out of the race. It was not until 1799, when Charles Tennant patented a process for producing solid bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) that it became a commercial success. SONY 148084122 laptop keyboard
By 1794 Watt had been chosen by Thomas Beddoes to manufacture apparatus to produce, clean and store gases for use in the new Pneumatic Institution atHotwells in Bristol. Watt continued to experiment with various gases for several years, but by 1797 the medical uses for the "factitious airs" had come to a dead end.[31] ASUS F6VE laptop keyboard
Watt combined theoretical knowledge of science with the ability to apply it practically. Humphry Davy said of him "Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very erroneous idea of his character; DELL XPS M1530 Laptop Keyboard
he was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical application".[32] COMPAQ Presario C700 Laptop Keyboard
He was greatly respected[33] by other prominent men of the Industrial Revolution. He was an important member of theLunar Society, and was a much sought-after conversationalist and companion, always interested in expanding his horizons.[34] His personal relationships with his friends and partners were always congenial and long-lasting. DELL PVDG3 Laptop Keyboard
Watt was a prolific correspondent. During his years in Cornwall, he wrote long letters to Boulton several times per week. He was averse to publishing his results in, for example, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Societyhowever, and instead preferred to communicate his ideas in patents.[35] He was an excellent draughtsman. SONY VAIO VGN-NR11M/S Laptop Keyboard
He was a rather poor businessman, and especially hated bargaining and negotiating terms with those who sought to utilize the steam engine. DELL Inspiron N5030 Laptop Keyboard
In a letter toWilliam Small in 1772, Watt confessed that "he would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain."[36] Until he retired, he was always much concerned about his financial affairs, and was something of a worrier. His health was often poor. He was subject to frequent nervous headaches and depression. ASUS F3H Laptop Keyboard
Soho Foundry
At first the partnership made the drawing and specifications for the engines, and supervised the work to erect it on the customers property. They produced almost none of the parts themselves. Watt did most of his work at his home in Harper’s Hill in Birmingham, while Boulton worked at the Soho Manufactory. Lenovo Thinkpad T520 Laptop Keyboard
Gradually the partners began to actually manufacture more and more of the parts, and by 1795 they purchased a property about a mile away from the Soho manufactory, on the banks of the Birmingham Canal, DELL Inspiron 6400 Laptop Keyboard
to establish a new foundry for the manufacture of the engines. The Soho Foundry formally opened in 1796 at a time when Watt’s sons, Gregory and James Jr. were heavily involved in the management of the enterprise. In 1800, the year of Watt’s retirement, the firm made a total of forty-one engines.[37] HP Pavilion dv6-2130er Laptop Keyboard
Later years
Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired. The famous partnership was transferred to the men's sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr. Longtime firm engineer William Murdoch was soon made a partner and the firm prospered. GATEWAY NX570X Laptop Keyboard
Watt continued to invent other things before and during his semi-retirement. Within his home in Handsworth Heath, Staffordshire, Watt made use of a garret room as a workshop, and it was here that he worked on many of his inventions.[38] HP G42-164LA Laptop Keyboard
Among other things, he invented and constructed several machines for copying sculptures and medallions which worked very well, but which he never patented.[39] One of the first sculptures he produced with the machine was a small head of his old professor friend Adam Smith. He maintained his interest in civil engineering and was a consultant on several significant projects. FUJITSU CP228900-01 Laptop Keyboard
He proposed, for example, a method for constructing a flexible pipe to be used for passing water under the Clyde at Glasgow.[40]
He and his second wife travelled to France and Germany, and he purchased an estate in Wales at Doldowlod House, one mile south of Llanwrthwl, which he much improved. TOSHIBA A000014900 laptop keyboard
In 1816 he took a trip on The Comet, a product of his inventions, to revisit his home town of Greenock.[41]
He died on 25 August 1819 at his home "Heathfield" in Handsworth, Birmingham, England at the age of 83. He was buried on 2 September. SONY VAIO VGN-FS760/W laptop keyboard
William Murdoch joined Boulton and Watt in 1777. At first he worked in the pattern shop in Soho, but soon he was erecting engines in Cornwall. He became an important part of the firm and made many contributions to its success. A very able man, he made several important inventions on his own. SONY VAIO VGN-N38Z/W laptop keyboard
John Griffiths, who wrote a biography[42] of him in 1992, has argued that Watt's discouraging Murdoch from working with high pressure steam (Watt rightly believed that boilers of the time would be unsafe) on his steam road locomotive experiments delayed its development.[43] DELL Inspiron N4050 laptop keyboard
Watt patented the application of the sun and planet gear to steam in 1781 and a steam locomotive in 1784, both of which have strong claims to have been invented by Murdoch.[44] The patent was never contested by Murdoch, however, and Boulton and Watt's firm continued to use the sun and planet gear in their rotative engines, HP 519265-001 laptop keyboard
even long after the patent for the crank expired in 1794. Murdoch was made a partner of the firm in 1810, where he remained until his retirement 20 years later at the age of 76.
James Watt's improvements to the steam engine "converted it from a prime mover of marginal efficiency into the mechanical workhorse of the Industrial Revolution".[45] HP G42-265LA laptop keyboard
The availability of efficient, reliable motive power made whole new classes of industry economically viable, and altered the economies of continents.[46] In doing so it brought about immense social change, attracting millions of rural families to the towns and cities. DELL NSK-D8001 laptop keyboard
Of Watt, the English novelist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) wrote; "To us, the moment 8:17 A.M. means something – something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance – did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stephenson were part inventors of time."[47] HP Pavilion dv6-3133nr laptop keyboard
Honours
Watt was much honoured in his own time. In 1784 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was elected as a member of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy, of Rotterdam in 1787. SONY VAIO VGN-NR11M/S laptop keyboard
In 1789 he was elected to the elite group, the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.[48] In 1806 he was conferred the honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Glasgow. The French Academy elected him a Corresponding Member and he was made a Foreign Associate in 1814.[49] Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
The watt is named after James Watt for his contributions to the development of the steam engine, and was adopted by the Second Congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1889 and by the 11th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960 as the unit of power incorporated in the International System of Units (or "SI").TOSHIBA Satellite M645-S4070 laptop keyboard
On 29 May 2009 the Bank of England announced that Boulton and Watt would appear on a new £50 note. The design is the first to feature a dual portrait on a Bank of England note, and presents the two industrialists side by side with images of Watt's steam engine and Boulton's Soho Manufactory. Quotes attributed to each of the men are inscribed on the note: "I sell here, sir, HP Pavilion dv5-1002au laptop keyboard
what all the world desires to have—POWER" (Boulton) and "I can think of nothing else but this machine" (Watt). The inclusion of Watt is the second time that a Scot has featured on a Bank of England note (the first was Adam Smith on the 2007 issue £20 note).[50] In September 2011 it was announced that the notes would enter circulation on 2 November.[51] GATEWAY NX570X laptop keyboard
In 2011 he was one of seven inaugural inductees to the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.[52]
Watt was buried in the grounds of St. Mary's Church, Handsworth, in Birmingham. Later expansion of the church, over his grave, means that his tomb is now buried inside the church.[53] HP Pavilion DV7-3065dx Laptop Keyboard
The garret room workshop that Watt used in his retirement was left, locked and untouched, until 1853, when it was first viewed by his biographer J. P. Muirhead. Thereafter, it was occasionally visited, but left untouched, as a kind of shrine. A proposal to have it transferred to the Patent Office came to nothing. When the house was due to be demolished in 1924, HP Pavilion dv3z-1000 Laptop Keyboard
the room and all its contents were presented to the Science Museum, where it was recreated in its entirety.[54] It remained on display for visitors for many years, but was walled-off when the gallery it was housed in closed. The workshop remained intact, and preserved, and in March 2011 was put on public display as part of a new permanent Science Museum exhibition, "James Watt and our world".[55] IBM Lenovo ThinkPad R51 1833 Laptop Keyboard
The approximate location of James Watt's birth in Greenock is commemorated by a statue. Several locations and street names in Greenock recall him, most notably the Watt Memorial Library, which was begun in 1816 with Watt's donation of scientific books HP HDX18-1000EO Laptop Keyboard
, and developed as part of the Watt Institution by his son (which ultimately became the James Watt College). Taken over by the local authority in 1974, the library now also houses the local history collection and archives of Inverclyde, and is dominated by a large seated statue in the vestibule. Watt is additionally commemorated by statuary in George Square, Compaq Presario CQ57 Series Laptop Keyboard
Glasgow and Princes Street, Edinburgh, as well as several others in Birmingham, where he is also remembered by the Moonstones and a school is named in his honour.
The James Watt College has expanded from its original location to include campuses in Kilwinning (North Ayrshire), Finnart Street and The Waterfront in Greenock, and the Sports campus in Largs. HP G71-448CL Laptop Keyboard
Heriot-Watt University near Edinburgh was at one time the School of Arts of Edinburgh, founded in 1821 as the world’s first Mechanics Institute, but to commemorate George Heriot, the 16th century financier to King James, and James Watt, after Royal Charter the name was changed to Heriot-Watt University. SAMSUNG Q330-JS02 Laptop Keyboard
Dozens of university and college buildings (chiefly of science and technology) are named after him. Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, is now a museum, commemorating the work of both men. The University of Glasgow's Faculty of Engineering has its headquarters in the James Watt Building, HP G62-361TX Laptop Keyboard
which also houses the department of Mechanical Engineering and the department of Aerospace Engineering. The huge paintingJames Watt contemplating the steam engine by James Eckford Lauder is now owned by the National Gallery of Scotland. HP Pavilion dv6-2157sb Laptop Keyboard
Prior to Newcomen a number of small steam devices of various sorts had been made, but most were essentially novelties.[2] Around 1600 a number of experimenters used steam to power small fountains working something on the principle of a coffee percolator. GATEWAY V021646BS1 Laptop Keyboard
First a container was filled with water, then heated to make it boil; the steam generated displaced the water, forcing it up a pipe that reached down to the bottom of the water so that it spurted out of a nozzle on top of the container. These devices would have been limited in their effectiveness and could only serve to demonstrate a principle. DELL Vostro 1014 Laptop Keyboard
In 1662 Edward Somerset, second Marquess of Worcester, published a book containing several ideas he had been working on.[3] One was for a steam-powered pump to supply water to fountains; HP Mini 210-1064TU Laptop Keyboard
the device alternately used a vacuum and steam pressure. Two containers were alternately filled with steam, then sprayed with cold water making the steam condense; this produced a vacuum that would draw water through a pipe up from a well to the container. HP Mini 210-1109TU Laptop Keyboard
A fresh charge of steam under pressure then drove the water from the container up another pipe to a higher-level header before being condensed and repeating the cycle. By working the two containers alternately, delivery rate to the header tank could be increased. DELL Vostro PP38L laptop keyboard
Louis Figuier in his monumental work[5] gives a full quotation of Denis Papin's paper published in 1690 in Acta eruditorum at Leipzig, entitled "Nouvelle méthode pour obtenir à bas prix des forces considérables" (A new method for cheaply obtaining considerable forces). It seems that the idea came to Papin whilst working with Robert Boyle at the Royal Society in London. HP Pavilion dv6-2155dx laptop keyboard
Papin describes first pouring a small quantity of water into the bottom of a vertical cylinder, inserting a piston on a rod and after first evacuating the air below the piston, placing a fire beneath the cylinder to boil the water away and create enough steam pressure to raise the piston to the top end of the cylinder. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
The piston was then temporarily locked in the upper position by a spring catch engaging a notch in the rod. The fire was then removed, allowing the cylinder to cool, which condensed steam back into water, thus creating a vacuum beneath the piston. HP Pavilion dv4-1240tx laptop keyboard
To the end of the piston rod was attached a cord passing over two pulleys and a weight hung down from the cord's end. Upon releasing the catch, the piston was sharply drawn down to the bottom of the cylinder by the pressure differential between the atmosphere and the created vacuum; enough force was thus generated to raise a 60 lb (27 kg) SONY VGN-FE21B laptop keyboard
weight. Although the engine certainly worked as far as it went, it was devised merely to demonstrate the principle and having got thus far, Papin never developed it further, although in his paper he did write about the potential of boats driven by "firetubes". Instead he allowed himself to be distracted into developing a variant of the Savery engine. SONY VGN-FE21B laptop keyboard
In 1698 Thomas Savery patented a steam-powered pump he called the Miner's Friend,[4] essentially identical to Somerset's design and almost certainly a direct copy. The process of cooling and creating the vacuum was fairly slow, so Savery later added an external cold water spray to quickly cool the steam. HP Pavilion DV7-3085dx laptop keyboard
Savery's invention had no moving parts. Consequently it cannot be strictly regarded as the first steam "engine", since it could not transmit its power to any external device. There were evidently high hopes for the Miner's Friend, SONY VAIO VGN-SZ640 laptop keyboard
which led Parliament to extend the life of the patent by 21 years, so that the 1699 patent would not expire until 1733. Unfortunately, Savery's device proved much less successful than had been hoped. TOSHIBA Satellite A135-S4447 laptop keyboard
A problem with Savery's device stemmed from the fact that a vacuum could only raise water to a maximum height of about 30 ft (9 m), to this could be added another 40 ft (12 m), or so, raised by steam pressure. This was insufficient to pump water out of a mine. HP G42-475TU laptop keyboard
In Savery's pamphlet, he suggests setting the boiler and containers on a ledge in the mineshaft and even a series of two or more pumps for deeper levels. Obviously these were inconvenient solutions and some sort of mechanical pump working at surface level –HP 441541-001 laptop keyboard
one that lifted the water directly instead of "sucking" it up – was desirable. Such pumps were common already, powered by horses, but required a vertical reciprocating drive that Savery's system did not provide HP Pavilion dv3-2157cl laptop keyboard
Newcomen took forward Papin's experiment and made it workable, although little information exists as to exactly how this came about. The main problem to which Papin had given no solution was how to make the action repeatable at regular intervals. Lenovo 45N2071 laptop keyboard
The way forward was to provide, as Savery had, a boiler capable of ensuring the continuity of the supply of steam to the cylinder, providing the vacuum power stroke by condensing the steam, and disposing of the water once it had been condensed. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
The power piston was hung by chains from the end of a rocking beam. Unlike Savery's device, pumping was entirely mechanical, the work of the steam engine being to lift a weighted rod slung from the opposite extremity of the rocking beam. DELL Vostro PP38L laptop keyboard
The rod descended the mine shaft by gravity and drove a force pump, or pole pump (or most often a gang of two) inside the mineshaft. The suction stroke of the pump was only for the length of the upward (priming) stroke, there consequently was no longer the 30-foot restriction of a vacuum pump and water could be forced up a column from far greater depths. HP HDX18-1100 CTO laptop keyboard
The boiler supplied the steam at extremely low pressure and was at first located immediately beneath the power cylinder but could also be placed behind a separating wall with a connecting steam pipe. Making all this work needed the skill of a practical engineer; TOSHIBA Satellite L755D-SP5172LM laptop keyboard
Newcomen's trade as an "ironmonger" or metal merchant would have given him significant practical knowledge of what materials would be suitable for such an engine (e.g., due to high resistance against steam pressure) and brought him into contact with persons having even more detailed knowledge. DELL INSPIRON 1464 Laptop Keyboard
It is possible that the first Newcomen engine was in Cornwall. Its location is uncertain, but it is known that one was in operation at Wheal Vor mine in 1715.[6] The earliest examples for which reliable records exist were two engines in the Black Country, SONY VAIO VGN-NW240F Laptop Keyboard
of which the more famous was that erected in 1712 at the Conygree Coalworks near Dudley,[7] This is generally accepted as the first successful Newcomen engine, but it may have been preceded by one built a mile and a half east of Wolverhampton.[8] ACER TravelMate 2800 Series Laptop Keyboard
Both these were used by Newcomen and his partner John Calley to pump out water-filled coal mines. A working replica can today be seen at the nearby Black Country Living Museum, which stands on another part of what was Lord Dudley's Conygree Park. DELL INSPIRON 1464 Laptop Keyboard
· Soon orders from wet mines all over England were coming in, and some have suggested that word of his achievement was spread through his Baptistconnections. Since Savery's patent had not yet run out, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420 Keyboard
Newcomen was forced to come to an arrangement with Savery and operate under the latter's patent,as its term was much longer than any Newcomen could have easily obtained. During the latter years of its currency, the patent belonged to an unincorporated company, The Proprietors of the Invention for raising water by fire. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S420 Keyboard
Although its first use was in coal-mining areas, Newcomen's engine was also used for pumping water out of the metal mines in his native West Country, such as the tin mines of Cornwall. By the time of his death, Newcomen and others had installed over a hundred of his engines, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420S Keyboard
not only in the West Country and the Midlands but also in north Wales, near Newcastle and in Cumbria. Small numbers were built in other European countries, including in France, Belgium, Spain, and Hungary, also at Dannemora, Sweden. Lenovo Thinkpad T420 Keyboard
Evidence of the use of a Newcomen Steam Engine associated with early coal mines was found in 2010 in Midlothian, VA (site of some of the first coal mines in the US). (Dutton and Associates survey dated 24 November 2009). Lenovo Thinkpad T420i Keyboard
Although based on simple principles, Newcomen's engine was rather complex and showed signs of incremental development, problems being empirically addressed as they arose. It consisted of a boiler A, usually a haystack boiler, situated directly below the cylinder. This produced large quantities of very low pressure steam, no more than 1 – 2 psi (0.07 – 0.14 bar) Lenovo Thinkpad T420S Keyboard
– the maximum allowable pressure for a boiler that in earlier versions was made of copper with a domed top of lead and later entirely assembled from small riveted iron plates. The action of the engine was transmitted through a rocking "Great balanced Beam" HP 381068-001 Laptop Keyboard
the fulcrum E of which rested on the very solid end-gable wall of the purpose-built engine house with the pump side projecting outside of the building, the engine being located in-house. The pump rods were slung by a chain from the arch-head F of the great beam. FUJITSU CP228900-01 Laptop Keyboard
From the in-house arch-head D was suspended a piston P working in a cylinder B, the top end of which was open to the atmosphere above the piston and the bottom end closed, apart from the short admission pipe connecting the cylinder to the boiler; early cylinders were made of cast brass, but cast iron was soon found more effective and much cheaper to produce. HP G61-400SP laptop keyboard
The piston was surrounded by a seal in the form of a leather ring, but as the cylinder bore was finished by hand and not absolutely true, a layer of water had to be constantly maintained on top of the piston. Installed high up in the engine house was a water tank C (or header tank) fed by a small in-house pump slung from a smaller arch-head. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
The header tank supplied cold water under pressure via a stand-pipe for condensing the steam in the cylinder with a small branch supplying the cylinder-sealing water; at each top stroke of the piston excess warm sealing water overflowed down two pipes, one to the in-house well and the other to feed the boiler by gravity. IBM Lenovo ThinkPad R50e-1870 laptop keyboard
In early versions the valves or plugs as they were then called, were operated manually by the plug man but the repetitive action demanded precise timing, making automatic action desirable. This was obtained by means of a plug tree which was a beam suspended vertically alongside the cylinder from a small arch head by crossed chains its function being to open and close the valves automatically when the beam reached certain positions, TOSHIBA 9J.N7482.901 laptop keyboard
by means of tappets and escapement mechanisms using weights. On the 1712 engine, the water feed pump was attached to the bottom of the plug tree, but later engines had the pump outside suspended from a separate small arch-head. HP Pavilion DV6z-1200 CTO laptop keyboard
There is a common legend that in 1713 a cock boy named Humphrey Potter,[9] whose duty it was to open and shut the valves of an engine he attended, made the engine self-acting by causing the beam itself to open and close the valves by suitable cords and catches (known as the "potter cord");[10] SONY VAIO VGN-CS21S/W laptop keyboard
however the plug tree device (the first form of valve gear) was very likely established practice before 1715 and is clearly depicted in the earliest known images of Newcomen engines by Henry Beighton 1717[11] (believed by Hulse to depict the 1714 Griff colliery engine) and by Thomas Barney (1719) (depicting the 1712 Dudley Castle engine). HP Pavilion dv6-2130er Laptop Keyboard
Because of the very heavy steam demands, the engine had to be periodically stopped and restarted, but even this process was automated by means of a buoy rising and falling in a vertical stand pipe fixed to the boiler (the firstpressure gauge?). HP Probook 4510S Laptop Keyboard
The buoy was attached to the scoggen, a weighted lever that worked a stop blocking the water injection valve shut until more steam had been raised.
In early versions the valves or plugs as they were then called, were operated manually by the plug man but the repetitive action demanded precise timing, FUJITSU Lifebook E8110 Laptop Keyboard
making automatic action desirable. This was obtained by means of a plug tree which was a beam suspended vertically alongside the cylinder from a small arch head by crossed chains its function being to open and close the valves automatically when the beam reached certain positions, by means of tappets and escapement mechanisms using weights. ACER Aspire One D150-1920 Laptop Keyboard
On the 1712 engine, the water feed pump was attached to the bottom of the plug tree, but later engines had the pump outside suspended from a separate small arch-head. There is a common legend that in 1713 a cock boy named Humphrey Potter,[9] DELL Vostro 3550 Laptop Keyboard
whose duty it was to open and shut the valves of an engine he attended, made the engine self-acting by causing the beam itself to open and close the valves by suitable cords and catches (known as the "potter cord");[10] SONY 147915321 Laptop Keyboard
however the plug tree device (the first form of valve gear) was very likely established practice before 1715 and is clearly depicted in the earliest known images of Newcomen engines by Henry Beighton 1717[11] (believed by Hulse to depict the 1714 Griff colliery engine) and by Thomas Barney (1719) (depicting the 1712 Dudley Castle engine). IBM Lenovo Thinkpad X201 Laptop Keyboard
Because of the very heavy steam demands, the engine had to be periodically stopped and restarted, but even this process was automated by means of a buoy rising and falling in a vertical stand pipe fixed to the boiler (the firstpressure gauge?). HP Pavilion dv6-2130er Laptop Keyboard
The main problem with the Newcomen design was that it was very expensive to operate. After the cylinder was cooled to create the vacuum, the cylinder walls were cold enough to condense some of the steam as it was admitted. HP G62t-350 CTO Laptop Keyboard
This meant that a considerable amount of fuel was being used just to heat the cylinder back to the point where the steam would start to fill it again. As the heat losses were related to the surfaces, while useful work related to the volume, increases in the size of the engine increased efficiency. Newcomen engines became larger in time. HP 496878-001 Laptop Keyboard
However, efficiency did not matter very much within the context of a colliery, where coal was freely available.
Newcomen's engine was only replaced when James Watt improved it in 1769 to avoid this problem (Watt had been asked to repair a model of a Newcomen engine by Glasgow University. A model exaggerated the scale problem of the Newcomen engine). Compaq Presario CQ57 Series Laptop Keyboard
In the Watt steam engine, condensation took place in a separate container, attached to the steam cylinder via a pipe. When a valve on the pipe was opened, the vacuum in the condenser would, in turn, evacuate that part of the cylinder below the piston. This eliminated the cooling of the main cylinder, and dramatically reduced fuel use. HP 636376-001 Laptop Keyboard
It also enabled the development of a double-acting cylinder, with upwards and downwards power strokes more suited to transmitting power to a wheel.
Watt's design, introduced in 1769, did not eliminate Newcomen engines immediately. Watt's vigorous defence of hispatents resulted in the desire to avoid royalty payments as far as possible.
The expiry of the patents led to a rush to install Watt engines in the 1790s, and Newcomen engines were eclipsed, even in collieries.
ACER NSK-H361D Laptop Keyboard
Using boiling water to produce mechanical motion goes back about 2,000 years, but early devices were not practical. The Spanish inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont patented in 1606 the first steam engine. In 1679 Thomas Saverydeveloped a steam pump that used steam in direct contact with the water being pumped. SAMSUNG N150 Laptop Keyboard
Savery's steam pump used condensing steam to create a vacuum and draw water into a chamber, and then applied pressurized steam to further pump the water. The first commercial true steam engine using a piston was developed by Thomas Newcomen and was used in 1712 for pumping in a mine. TOSHIBA Satellite A300 Laptop Keyboard
In 1781 James Watt patented a steam engine that produced continuous rotative motion.[1] Watt's ten-horsepower engines enabled a wide range of manufacturing machinery to be powered. The engines could be sited anywhere that water and coal or wood fuel could be obtained. By 1883, engines that could provide 10,000 hp had become feasible.[2] ACER Aspire One D150-1920 Laptop Keyboard
Steam engines could also be applied to vehicles such as traction engines and the railway locomotives. The stationary steam engine was a key component of the Industrial Revolution, allowing factories to locate where water power was unavailable. DELL PVDG3 Laptop Keyboard
Steam engines are external combustion engines,[3] where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be used. HP Business Notebook nx9000 Laptop Keyboard
The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In the cycle, water is heated and transforms into steam within a boiler operating at a high pressure. When expanded through pistons or turbines, mechanical work is done. The reduced-pressure steam is then condensed and pumped back into the boiler. HP Mini 110-3135dx Laptop Keyboard
In general usage, the term steam engine can refer to either the integrated steam plants (including boilers etc.) such as railway steam locomotives andportable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. ASUS F80Q Laptop Keyboard
Specialized devices such assteam hammers and steam pile drivers are dependent on steam supplied from a separate boiler. Reciprocating piston type steam engines remained the dominant source of power until the early 20th century, when advances in the design of electric motors and internal combustion engines gradually resulted in the replacement of reciprocating (piston) HP 636376-001 laptop keyboard
steam engines in commercial usage, and the ascendancy of steam turbines in power generation.[4] Considering that the great majority of worldwide electric generation is produced by turbine type steam engines, the "steam age" is continuing with energy levels far beyond those of the turn of the 19th century. HP Compaq NC8400 laptop keyboard
Since the early 18th century, steam power has been applied to a variety of practical uses. At first it was applied to reciprocating pumps, but from the 1780s rotative engines (i.e. those converting reciprocating motion into rotary motion) began to appear, DELL NSK-DB301 laptop keyboard
driving factory machinery such as spinning mulesand power looms. At the turn of the 19th century, steam-powered transport on both sea and land began to make its appearance becoming ever more dominant as the century progressed. SONY KFRMBA151B laptop keyboard
Steam engines can be said to have been the moving force behind the Industrial Revolution and saw widespread commercial use driving machinery in factories, mills and mines; powering pumping stations; and propelling transport appliances such as railway locomotives, ships and road vehicles. Their use in agriculture led to an increase in the land available for cultivation.[5] TOSHIBA Satellite L655-S5107 laptop keyboard
The weight of boilers and condensors generally makes the power-to-weight ratio of a steam plant lower than for internal combustion engines.[6] For mobile applications steam has been largely superseded by internal combustion engines or electric motors. HP G61-511WM laptop keyboard
However most electric power is generated using steamturbine plant, so that indirectly the world's industry is still dependent on steam power. Recent concerns about fuel sources and pollution have incited a renewed interest in steam both as a component of cogeneration processes and as a prime mover. This is becoming known as the Advanced Steammovement.[citation needed] SONY KFRGBA028B laptop keyboard
The first commercially successful true engine, in that it could generate power and transmit it to a machine, was the atmospheric engine, invented byThomas Newcomen around 1712.[17][18] It made use of technologies discovered by Savery and Papin. Newcomen's engine was relatively inefficient, and in most cases was used for pumping water. HP Mini 210 laptop keyboard
It worked by creating a partial vacuum by condensing steam under a piston within a cylinder. It was employed for draining mine workings at depths hitherto impossible, and also for providing a reusable water supply for driving waterwheels at factories sited away from a suitable "head". Water that had passed over the wheel was pumped back up into a storage reservoir above the wheel.[19] TOSHIBA Satellite l25-s1196 laptop keyboard
In 1720 Jacob Leupold described a two-cylinder high pressure steam engine.[20] The invention was published in his major work "Theatri Machinarum Hydraulicarum".[21] The engine used two lead-weighted pistons providing a continuous motion to a water pump. IBM 42T3671 laptop keyboard
piston was raised by the steam pressure and returned to its original position by gravity. The two pistons shared a common four way rotary valve connected directly to a steam boiler.
The next major step occurred when James Watt developed (1763–1775) an improved version of Newcomen's engine, with a separate condenser. Boulton and Watt's early engines used half as much coal as John Smeaton's improved version of Newcomen's.[22] Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E125 laptop keyboard
Newcomen's and Watt's early engines were "atmospheric". They were powered by air pressure pushing a piston into the partial vacuum generated bycondensing steam, instead of the pressure of expanding steam. The engine cylindershad to be large because the only usable force acting on them was due toatmospheric pressure.[19][23]
HP Pavilion dv6-2187la laptop keyboard
This enabled factories to be sited away from rivers, and further accelerated the pace of the Industrial Revolution.[19][23][24]
Early builders of stationary steam engines, considered that horizontal cylinders would be subject to excessive wear – a curious view as contemporary steam locomotives almost all had horizontal cylinders. SONY VAIO VGN-CR363 laptop keyboard
Their engines were therefore arranged with the piston axis vertical. In time the horizontal arrangement became more popular, allowing compact, but powerful engines to be fitted in smaller spaces. Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
The acme of the horizontal engine was the Corliss steam engine, patented in 1849, which was a four-valve counter flow engine with separate steam admission and exhaust valves and automatic variable steam cutoff. When introduced, HP Mini 210-1084TU laptop keyboard
it was called the most significant advance in the steam engine since James Watt. In addition to using 30% less steam, it provided more uniform speed due to variable steam cut off, making it well suited to manufacturing, especially cotton spinning.[19][24] HP Pavilion DV7-3065dx Laptop Keyboard
As the development of steam engines progressed through the 18th century, various attempts were made to apply them to road and railway use.[29] In 1784, William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, built a prototype steam road locomotive.[30] HP 496878-001 Laptop Keyboard
An early working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by steamboat pioneer John Fitch in the United States probably during the 1780s or 1790s.[31] His steam locomotive used interior bladed wheels guided by rails or tracks. Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in the United Kingdom and, on 21 February 1804, the world's first railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfilto Abercynon in south Wales.[29][32][33] HP Pavilion DV7-3067nr laptop keyboard
The design incorporated a number of important innovations that included using high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency. Trevithick visited the Newcastle area later in 1804 and the colliery railways in north-east England became the leading centre for experimentation and development of steam locomotives.[34] HP Pavilion DV3000 laptop keyboard
Trevithick continued his own experiments using a trio of locomotives, concluding with the Catch Me Who Can in 1808. Only four years later, the successful twin-cylinder locomotive Salamanca by Matthew Murray was used by the edge railed rack and pinion Middleton Railway.[35] In 1825 George Stephenson built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway. ASUS F6VE laptop keyboard
This was the first public steam railway in the world and then in 1829, he built The Rocket which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials.[36] TheLiverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830 making exclusive use of steam power for both passenger and freight trains. SONY VGN-FE41S laptop keyboard
Steam locomotives continued to be manufactured until the late twentieth century in places such as China and the former East Germany.[37]
There are two fundamental components of a steam plant: the boiler or steam generator, and the "motor unit", referred to itself as a "steam engine".Stationary steam engines in fixed buildings may have the boiler and engine in separate buildings some distance apart. HP Pavilion DV7-3067nr laptop keyboard
For portable or mobile use, such assteam locomotives, the two are mounted together.[40][41]
The widely used reciprocating engine typically consisted of a cast iron cylinder, piston, connecting rod and beam or a crank and flywheel, and miscellaneous linkages. HP Pavilion DV7-3165dx laptop keyboard
Steam was alternately supplied and exhausted by one or more valves. Speed control was either automatic, using a governor, or by a manual valve. The cylinder casting contained steam supply and exhaust ports. DELL Studio 1749 laptop keyboard
Engines equipped with a condenser are a separate type than those that exhaust to the atmosphere.
Other components are often present; pumps (such as an injector) to supply water to the boiler during operation, condensers to recirculate the water and recover the latent heat of vaporisation, and superheaters to raise the temperature of the steam above its saturated vapour point, DELL Studio 1747 laptop keyboard
and various mechanisms to increase the draft for fireboxes. When coal is used, a chain or screw stoking mechanism and its drive engine or motor may be included to move the fuel from a supply bin (bunker) to the firebox.[42] See: Mechanical stoker SONY VAIO VGN-NW320F/T laptop keyboard
As with all heat engines, a considerable quantity of waste heat at relatively low temperature is produced and must be disposed of.
The simplest cold sink is to vent the steam to the environment. This is often used on steam locomotives, as the released steam is released in the chimney so as to increase the draw on the fire, which greatly increases engine power, but is inefficient. HP COMPAQ 486654-001 laptop keyboard
Condensing steam locomotives have been built, but only for special applications such as working in tunnels and where supplies of water are scarce.[citation needed]
Sometimes the waste heat is useful itself, and in those cases very high overall efficiency can be obtained. For example, combined heat and power (CHP) systems use the waste steam for district heating.[citation needed] TOSHIBA NSK-T4701 laptop keyboard
Where CHP is not used, steam turbines in power stations use surface condensers as a cold sink. The condensers are cooled by water flow from oceans, rivers, lakes, and often by cooling towers which evaporate water to provide cooling energy removal. TOSHIBA Satellite L655-S5155 laptop keyboard
The resulting condensed hot water output from the condenser is then put back into the boiler via a pump. A dry type cooling tower is similar to an automobile radiator and is used in locations where water is costly. Evaporative (wet) cooling towers use the rejected heat to evaporate water; this water is kept separate from the condensate, SONY VAIO PCG-FR415B laptop keyboard
which circulates in a closed system and returns to the boiler. Such towers often have visible plumes due to the evaporated water condensing into droplets carried up by the warm air. Evaporative cooling towers need less water flow than "once-through" HP Mini 110-3504tu laptop keyboard
cooling by river or lake water; a 700 megawatt coal-fired power plant may use about 3600 cubic metres of make-up water every hour for evaporative cooling, but would need about twenty times as much if cooled by river water.[citation needed]
Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
[45] The governor could not actually hold a set speed, which would assume a new constant speed in response to load changes. The governor was able to handle smaller variations such as those caused by fluctuating heat load to the boiler. Also, there was a tendency for oscillation whenever there was a speed change. SONY 148024022 laptop keyboard
As a consequence, engines equipped only with this governor were not suitable for operations requiring constant speed, such as cotton spinning.[46] The governor was improved over time and coupled with variable steam cut off, good speed control in response to changes in load was attainable near the end of the 19th century. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
For safety reasons, nearly all steam engines are equipped with mechanisms to monitor the boiler, such as a pressure gauge and a sight glass to monitor the water level.
Many engines, stationary and mobile, are also fitted with a governor to regulate the speed of the engine without the need for human interference (similar to cruise control in some cars). TOSHIBA MP-06863US-9308 Laptop Keyboard
The most useful instrument for analyzing the performance of steam engines is the steam engine indicator. Early versions were in use by 1851,[48] but the most successful indicator was developed for the high speed engine inventor and manufacturer Charles Porter by Charles Richard and exhibited at London Exhibition in 1862.[24] HP G72-a01SG Laptop Keyboard
The steam engine indicator traces on paper the pressure in the cylinder throughout the cycle, which can be used to spot various problems and calculate developed horsepower.[49] It was routinely used by engineers, mechanics and insurance inspectors. The engine indicator can also be used on internal combustion engines. See image of indicator diagram below. TOSHIBA Satellite L775D-S7340 Laptop Keyboard
A method to lessen the magnitude of this heating and cooling was invented in 1804 by British engineer Arthur Woolf, who patented his Woolf high pressurecompound engine in 1805. In the compound engine, high pressure steam from the boiler expands in a high pressure (HP) cylinder and then enters one or more subsequent lower pressure (LP) cylinders. ACER TravelMate 6292 Laptop Keyboard
The complete expansion of the steam now occurs across multiple cylinders and as less expansion now occurs in each cylinder less heat is lost by the steam in each. This reduces the magnitude of cylinder heating and cooling, increasing the efficiency of the engine. By staging the expansion in multiple cylinders, torque variability can be reduced.[19] HP Mini 210-1083CA Laptop Keyboard
To derive equal work from lower pressure steam requires a larger cylinder volume as this steam occupies a greater volume. Therefore the bore, and often the stroke, are increased in low pressure cylinders resulting in larger cylinders.[19] SONY Vaio PCG-K35 Laptop Keyboard
Double expansion (usually known as compound) engines expanded the steam in two stages. The pairs may be duplicated or the work of the large low pressure cylinder can be split with one high pressure cylinder exhausting into one or the other, giving a 3-cylinder layout where cylinder and piston diameter are about the same making the reciprocating masses easier to balance.[19] DELL Vostro 3550 Laptop Keyboard
With two-cylinder compounds used in railway work, the pistons are connected to the cranks as with a two-cylinder simple at 90° out of phase with each other (quartered). When the double expansion group is duplicated, producing a 4-cylinder compound, the individual pistons within the group are usually balanced at 180°, ACER Aspire One D150-1920 Laptop Keyboard
the groups being set at 90° to each other. In one case (the first type of Vauclain compound), the pistons worked in the same phase driving a common crosshead and crank, again set at 90° as for a two-cylinder engine. With the 3-cylinder compound arrangement, the LP cranks were either set at 90° with the HP one at 135° to the other two, or in some cases all three cranks were set at 120°.[citation needed] HP Mini 110-3012tu Laptop Keyboard
The adoption of compounding was common for industrial units, for road engines and almost universal for marine engines after 1880; it was not universally popular in railway locomotives where it was often perceived as complicated. SONY VAIO VGN-CS16G/Q Laptop Keyboard
This is partly due to the harsh railway operating environment and limited space afforded by the loading gauge (particularly in Britain, where compounding was never common and not employed after 1930). However, although never in the majority, it was popular in many other countries.[52]
It is a logical extension of the compound engine (described above) to split the expansion into yet more stages to increase efficiency. HP Probook 4320s Laptop Keyboard
The result is the multiple expansion engine. Such engines use either three or four expansion stages and are known as triple and quadruple expansion engines respectively. These engines use a series of cylinders of progressively increasing diameter. These cylinders are designed to divide the work into equal shares for each expansion stage. GATEWAY V021646BS1 Laptop Keyboard
As with the double expansion engine, if space is at a premium, then two smaller cylinders may be used for the low pressure stage. Multiple expansion engines typically had the cylinders arranged inline, but various other formations were used. TOSHIBA Satellite U305-S7467 laptop keyboard
In the late 19th century, the Yarrow-Schlick-Tweedy balancing 'system' was used on some marine triple expansion engines. Y-S-T engines divided the low pressure expansion stages between two cylinders, one at each end of the engine. This allowed the crankshaft to be better balanced, ACER 9J.N1H82.01D Laptop Keyboard
resulting in a smoother, faster-responding engine which ran with less vibration. This made the 4-cylinder triple-expansion engine popular with large passenger liners (such as the Olympic class), but this was ultimately replaced by the virtually vibration-free turbine (see below).[citation needed] HP Pavilion DV7-3067cl laptop keyboard
The image to the right shows an animation of a triple expansion engine. The steam travels through the engine from left to right. The valve chest for each of the cylinders is to the left of the corresponding cylinder. GATEWAY ML3109 laptop keyboard
Land-based steam engines could exhaust much of their steam, as feed water was usually readily available. Prior to and during World War I, the expansion engine dominated marine applications where high vessel speed was not essential. SONY KFRMBA220A laptop keyboard
It was however superseded by the British invention steam turbine where speed was required, for instance in warships, such as the dreadnought battleships, and ocean liners. HMS Dreadnought of 1905 was the first major warship to replace the proven technology of the reciprocating engine with the then-novel steam turbine.[citation needed]
COMPAQ Presario CQ60-200EP laptop keyboard
James Watt, FRS, FRSE (/wɒt/; 19 January 1736 – 25 August 1819)[1] was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. ACER TravelMate 2501LC Laptop Keyboard
While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology ofsteam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and re-heating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, SONY 148084122 Laptop Keyboard
which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. Eventually he adapted his engine to produce rotary motion, greatly broadening its use beyond pumping water. ASUS F6VE Laptop Keyboard
Watt attempted to commercialise his invention, but experienced great financial difficulties until he entered a partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775. The new firm of Boulton and Watt was eventually highly successful and Watt became a wealthy man. HP Mini 210-1014TU Laptop Keyboard
In his retirement, Watt continued to develop new inventions though none were as significant as his steam engine work. He died in 1819 at the age of 83. Watt has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.[2]
He developed the concept of horsepower[3] and the SI unit of power, the watt, was named after him. DELL Precision M4500 Laptop Keyboard
James Watt was born on 19 January 1736 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, a seaport on the Firth of Clyde.[4] His father was a shipwright, ship owner and contractor, and served as the town's chief baillie,[5] while his mother, Agnes Muirhead, ACER Aspire 7741G Laptop Keyboard
came from a distinguished family and was well educated. Both were Presbyterians and strong Covenanters.[6] Watt's grandfather, Thomas Watt, was a mathematics teacher and baillieto the Baron of Cartsburn.[7] Despite being raised by religious parents, he later on became a deist.[8][9]
Watt did not attend school regularly; HP AELX6U00210 Laptop Keyboard
initially he was mostly schooled at home by his mother but later he attended Greenock Grammar School.[10] He exhibited great manual dexterity, engineering skills and an aptitude for mathematics, while Latin and Greek failed to interest him. COMPAQ Presario C700 Laptop Keyboard
When he was eighteen, his mother died and his father's health began to fail. Watt travelled to London to study instrument-making for a year, then returned to Scotland, settling in the major commercial city of Glasgow intent on setting up his own instrument-making business. He made and repaired brass reflecting quadrants, DELL Vostro 1014 Laptop Keyboard
parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes, and barometers, among other things. Because he had not served at least seven years as an apprentice, the Glasgow Guild of Hammermen (which had jurisdiction over any artisans using hammers) blocked his application,[11] despite there being no other mathematical instrument makers in Scotland.[12] SONY 148084122 Laptop Keyboard
Watt was saved from this impasse by the arrival of astronomical instruments at the University of Glasgow, instruments that required expert attention.[13]Watt restored them to working order and was remunerated. DELL Vostro 3450 Laptop Keyboard
These instruments were eventually installed in the Macfarlane Observatory. Subsequently three professors offered him the opportunity to set up a small workshop within the university. It was initiated in 1757 and two of the professors, thephysicist and chemist Joseph Black as well as the famed Adam Smith, became Watt's friends.[14] ACER V104730BS1 Laptop Keyboard
At first he worked on maintaining and repairing scientific instruments used in the university, helping with demonstrations, and expanding the production of quadrants. In 1759 he formed a partnership with John Craig, an architect and businessman, to manufacture and sell a line of products including musical instruments and toys. HP CT1A Laptop Keyboard
This partnership lasted for the next six years, and employed up to sixteen workers. Craig died in 1765. One employee, Alex Gardner, eventually took over the business, which lasted into the twentieth century.[15] HP Pavilion dv3-2106tu Laptop Keyboard
In 1764, Watt married his cousin Margaret (Peggy) Miller, with whom he had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood: James Jr. (1769–1848) and Margaret (1767–1796). His wife died in childbirth in 1772. In 1777 he was married again, HP COMPAQ NX6325 Laptop Keyboard
to Ann MacGregor, daughter of a Glasgow dye-maker, with whom he had two children: Gregory (1777–1804), who became a geologist and mineralogist,[16] and Janet (1779–1794). Ann died in 1832. Between 1777 and 1790 he lived in Regent Place, Birmingham[17] DELL Vostro 1015 Laptop Keyboard
In 1759 Watt's friend, John Robison, called his attention to the use of steam as a source of motive power.[18] The design of theNewcomen engine, in use for almost 50 years for pumping water from mines, had hardly changed from its first implementation. Watt began to experiment with steam though he had never seen an operating steam engine. Compaq Presario CQ57 Series Laptop Keyboard
He tried constructing a model. It failed to work satisfactorily, but he continued his experiments and began to read everything he could about the subject. He came to realize the importance of latent heat in understanding the engine, which, unknown to Watt, his friend, Joseph Black, had previously discovered some years before. HP Pavilion DV7-3188cl laptop keyboard
Understanding of the steam engine was in a very primitive state, for the science of thermodynamics was not in place for another 100 years or so.
In 1763, Watt was asked to repair a model Newcomen engine belonging to the university.[18] Even after repair, this engine only barely worked. SONY Vaio VGN-AW310J laptop keyboard
After much experimentation, Watt demonstrated that about three-quarters of the heat of the steam was being wasted - consumed in heating the engine cylinder on every cycle.[19] This energy was wasted because later in the cycle, Lenovo ThinkPad T400S-2815 laptop keyboard
cold water was injected into the cylinder to condense the steam to reduce its pressure. Thus the engine expended much of its energy in repeatedly heating the cylinder rather than in delivering mechanical force. HP AELX6U00210 laptop keyboard
Watt's critical insight, arrived at in May 1765,[20] was to cause the steam to condense in a separate chamber apart from the piston, and to maintain the temperature of the cylinder at the same temperature as the injected steam (by surrounding it with a "steam jacket").[19] TOSHIBA Satellite L40-17U laptop keyboard
This meant that very little heat was absorbed into the cylinder itself on each cycle, and thus more heat from the steam was made available to perform useful work. Watt had a working model later that same year. SONY VAIO VGN-FS760/W laptop keyboard
Despite a potentially workable design, there were still substantial difficulties in constructing a full-scale engine. This required more capital, some of which came from Black. More substantial backing came from John Roebuck, ACER V104730BS1 laptop keyboard
the founder of the celebrated Carron Iron Works, near Falkirk, with whom he now formed a partnership. Roebuck lived at Kinneil House in Bo'ness, during which time Watt worked at perfecting his steam engine, in a cottage adjacent to the house. The shell of the cottage, and a very large part of one of his projects, still exist to the rear.[21] ACER Aspire 7751G laptop keyboard
The principal difficulty was in machining the piston and cylinder. Iron workers of the day were more likeblacksmiths than modern machinists and were unable to produce the components with sufficient precision. Much capital was spent in pursuing the ground-breaking patent on Watt's invention. Strapped for resources, Watt was forced to take up employment first as a surveyor, then as a civil engineer for eight years.[22] Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
Roebuck went bankrupt, and Matthew Boulton, who owned the Soho Foundry works near Birmingham, acquired his patent rights. An extension of the patent to 1800 was successfully obtained in 1775.[23] TOSHIBA PK130BH2A00 laptop keyboard
Through Boulton, Watt finally had access to some of the best ironworkers in the world. The difficulty of the manufacture of a large cylinder with a tightly fitting piston was solved by John Wilkinson who had developed precision boring techniques for cannon making at Bersham, near Wrexham, North Wales. Watt and Boulton formed a hugely successful partnership (Boulton and Watt) which lasted for the next twenty-five years. TOSHIBA MP-09K53US6698 laptop keyboard
In 1776, the first engines were installed and working in commercial enterprises. These first engines were used to power pumps and produced only reciprocating motion to move the pump rods at the bottom of the shaft. The design was commercially successful, and for the next five years Watt was very busy installing more engines, mostly in Cornwallfor pumping water out of mines. Compaq Presario CQ35 laptop keyboard
These early engines were not manufactured by Boulton and Watt, but were made by others according to drawings made by Watt, who served in the role of consulting engineer. The erection of the engine and its shakedown was supervised by Watt, at first, and then by men in the firm's employ. These were large machines. ACER Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Laptop Keyboard
The first, for example, had a cylinder with a diameter of some 50 inches and an overall height of about 24 feet, and required the construction of a dedicated building to house it. Boulton and Watt charged an annual payment, equal to one third of the value of the coal saved in comparison to a Newcomen engine performing the same work. HP G62-361TX Laptop Keyboard
The field of application for the invention was greatly widened when Boulton urged Watt to convert the reciprocating motion of the piston to produce rotational power for grinding, weaving and milling. Although a crank seemed the obvious solution to the conversion Watt and Boulton were stymied by a patent for this, whose holder, DELL Vostro 3550 Laptop Keyboard
James Pickard, and associates proposed to cross-license the external condenser. Watt adamantly opposed this and they circumvented the patent by their sun and planet gear in 1781.
Over the next six years, he made a number of other improvements and modifications to the steam engine. A double acting engine, in which the steam acted alternately on the two sides of the piston was one. He described methods for working the steam "expansively" (i.e., ACER TravelMate 290 Laptop Keyboard
using steam at pressures well above atmospheric). A compound engine, which connected two or more engines was described. Two more patents were granted for these in 1781 and 1782. Numerous other improvements that made for easier manufacture and installation were continually implemented. One of these included the use of the steam indicatorwhich produced an informative plot of the pressure in the cylinder against its volume, Lenovo 63Y0047 Laptop Keyboard
which he kept as a trade secret. Another important invention, one which Watt was most proud of, was the parallel motion which was essential in double-acting engines as it produced the straight line motion required for the cylinder rod and pump, from the connected rocking beam, whose end moves in a circular arc. This was patented in 1784. DELL NSK-D8001 Laptop Keyboard
A throttle valve to control the power of the engine, and a centrifugal governor, patented in 1788,[24] to keep it from "running away" were very important. These improvements taken together produced an engine which was up to five times as efficient in its use of fuel as the Newcomen engine. SONY VGN-FE21M Laptop Keyboard
Because of the danger of exploding boilers, which were in a very primitive stage of development, and the ongoing issues with leaks, Watt restricted his use of high pressure steam – all of his engines used steam at near atmospheric pressure. TOSHIBA V114302CS1 US laptop keyboard
Edward Bull started constructing engines for Boulton and Watt in Cornwall in 1781. By 1792 he had started making engines of his own design, but which contained a separate condenser, and so infringed Watt's patents. IBM Lenovo ThinkPad X301 laptop keyboard
Two brothers,Jabez Carter Hornblower and Jonathan Hornblower Jnr also started to build engines about the same time. Others began to modify Newcomen engines by adding a condenser, and the mine owners in Cornwall became convinced that Watt's patent could not be enforced. SONY VAIO VGN-FZ21Z laptop keyboard
They started to withhold payments due to Boulton and Watt, which by 1795 had fallen. Of the total £21,000 (£1,840,000 as of 2014) owed, only £2,500 had been received. Watt was forced to go to court to enforce his claims.[25] SONY VAIO VGN-NR21S/S laptop keyboard
He first sued Bull in 1793. The jury found for Watt, but the question of whether or not the original specification of the patent was valid was left to another trial. In the meantime, injunctions were issued against the infringers, SONY VGN-FE31B laptop keyboard
forcing their payments of the royalties to be placed in escrow. The trial on determining the validity of the specifications which was held in the following year was inconclusive, but the injunctions remained in force and the infringers, Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
except for Jonathan Hornblower, all began to settle their cases. Hornblower was soon brought to trial and the verdict of the four judges (in 1799) was decisively in favour of Watt. Their friend John Wilkinson, who had solved the problem of boring an accurate cylinder, SONY VAIO VGN-CR41S laptop keyboard
was a particularly grievous case. He had erected about twenty engines without Boulton's and Watts' knowledge. They finally agreed to settle the infringement in 1796.[26] Boulton and Watt never collected all that was owed them, DELL Vostro PP38L laptop keyboard
but the disputes were all settled directly between the parties or through arbitration. These trials were extremely costly in both money and time, but ultimately were successful for the firm. HP Mini 210-2002er laptop keyboard
Before 1780 there was no good method for making copies of letters or drawings. The only method sometimes used was a mechanical one using linked multiple pens. Watt at first experimented with improving this method, SONY VAIO VGN-FW11S laptop keyboard
but soon gave up on this approach because it was so cumbersome. He instead decided to try to physically transfer some ink from the front of the original to the back of another sheet, moistened with a solvent, and pressed to the original. The second sheet had to be thin, so that the ink could be seen through it when the copy was held up to the light, thus reproducing the original exactly.[27][28] HP Pavilion dv6-3134nr laptop keyboard
Watt started to develop the process in 1779, and made many experiments to formulate the ink, select the thin paper, to devise a method for wetting the special thin paper, and to make a press suitable for applying the correct pressure to effect the transfer. COMPAQ Presario CQ61-300 laptop keyboard
All of these required much experimentation, but he soon had enough success to patent the process a year later. Watt formed another partnership with Boulton (who provided financing) and James Keir(to manage the business) in a firm called James Watt and Co. HP Mini 110-1197TU laptop keyboard
The perfection of the invention required much more development work before it could be routinely used by others, but this was carried out over the next few years. Boulton and Watt gave up their shares to their sons in 1794.[29] It became a commercial success and was widely used in offices even into the twentieth century. TOSHIBA G83C0003G110 laptop keyboard
Chemical experiments
From an early age Watt was very interested in chemistry. In late 1786, while in Paris, he witnessed an experiment by Berthollet in which he reactedhydrochloric acid with manganese dioxide to produce chlorine. He had already found that an aqueous solution of chlorine could bleach textiles, and had published his findings, HP Pavilion dv6-3230us laptop keyboard
which aroused great interest among many potential rivals. When Watt returned to Britain, he began experiments along these lines with hopes of finding a commercially viable process. He discovered that a mixture of salt, Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
manganese dioxide and sulfuric acid could produce chlorine, which Watt believed might be a cheaper method. He passed the chlorine into a weak solution of alkali, and obtained a turbid solution that appeared to have good bleaching properties. He soon communicated these results to James McGrigor, his father-in-law, who was a bleacher in Glasgow. Otherwise he tried to keep his method a secret.[30] DELL NSK-D8001 laptop keyboard
With McGrigor and his wife Annie, he started to scale up the process, and in March 1788, McGrigor was able to bleach 1500 yards of cloth to his satisfaction. About this time Berthollet discovered the salt and sulphuric acid process, and published it so it became public knowledge. Many others began to experiment with improving the process, SONY VGN-FE21M laptop keyboard
which still had many shortcomings, not the least of which was the problem of transporting the liquid product. Watt's rivals soon overtook him in developing the process, and he dropped out of the race. It was not until 1799, when Charles Tennant patented a process for producing solid bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) that it became a commercial success. SONY 148084122 laptop keyboard
By 1794 Watt had been chosen by Thomas Beddoes to manufacture apparatus to produce, clean and store gases for use in the new Pneumatic Institution atHotwells in Bristol. Watt continued to experiment with various gases for several years, but by 1797 the medical uses for the "factitious airs" had come to a dead end.[31] ASUS F6VE laptop keyboard
Watt combined theoretical knowledge of science with the ability to apply it practically. Humphry Davy said of him "Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very erroneous idea of his character; DELL XPS M1530 Laptop Keyboard
he was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical application".[32] COMPAQ Presario C700 Laptop Keyboard
He was greatly respected[33] by other prominent men of the Industrial Revolution. He was an important member of theLunar Society, and was a much sought-after conversationalist and companion, always interested in expanding his horizons.[34] His personal relationships with his friends and partners were always congenial and long-lasting. DELL PVDG3 Laptop Keyboard
Watt was a prolific correspondent. During his years in Cornwall, he wrote long letters to Boulton several times per week. He was averse to publishing his results in, for example, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Societyhowever, and instead preferred to communicate his ideas in patents.[35] He was an excellent draughtsman. SONY VAIO VGN-NR11M/S Laptop Keyboard
He was a rather poor businessman, and especially hated bargaining and negotiating terms with those who sought to utilize the steam engine. DELL Inspiron N5030 Laptop Keyboard
In a letter toWilliam Small in 1772, Watt confessed that "he would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain."[36] Until he retired, he was always much concerned about his financial affairs, and was something of a worrier. His health was often poor. He was subject to frequent nervous headaches and depression. ASUS F3H Laptop Keyboard
Soho Foundry
At first the partnership made the drawing and specifications for the engines, and supervised the work to erect it on the customers property. They produced almost none of the parts themselves. Watt did most of his work at his home in Harper’s Hill in Birmingham, while Boulton worked at the Soho Manufactory. Lenovo Thinkpad T520 Laptop Keyboard
Gradually the partners began to actually manufacture more and more of the parts, and by 1795 they purchased a property about a mile away from the Soho manufactory, on the banks of the Birmingham Canal, DELL Inspiron 6400 Laptop Keyboard
to establish a new foundry for the manufacture of the engines. The Soho Foundry formally opened in 1796 at a time when Watt’s sons, Gregory and James Jr. were heavily involved in the management of the enterprise. In 1800, the year of Watt’s retirement, the firm made a total of forty-one engines.[37] HP Pavilion dv6-2130er Laptop Keyboard
Later years
Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired. The famous partnership was transferred to the men's sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr. Longtime firm engineer William Murdoch was soon made a partner and the firm prospered. GATEWAY NX570X Laptop Keyboard
Watt continued to invent other things before and during his semi-retirement. Within his home in Handsworth Heath, Staffordshire, Watt made use of a garret room as a workshop, and it was here that he worked on many of his inventions.[38] HP G42-164LA Laptop Keyboard
Among other things, he invented and constructed several machines for copying sculptures and medallions which worked very well, but which he never patented.[39] One of the first sculptures he produced with the machine was a small head of his old professor friend Adam Smith. He maintained his interest in civil engineering and was a consultant on several significant projects. FUJITSU CP228900-01 Laptop Keyboard
He proposed, for example, a method for constructing a flexible pipe to be used for passing water under the Clyde at Glasgow.[40]
He and his second wife travelled to France and Germany, and he purchased an estate in Wales at Doldowlod House, one mile south of Llanwrthwl, which he much improved. TOSHIBA A000014900 laptop keyboard
In 1816 he took a trip on The Comet, a product of his inventions, to revisit his home town of Greenock.[41]
He died on 25 August 1819 at his home "Heathfield" in Handsworth, Birmingham, England at the age of 83. He was buried on 2 September. SONY VAIO VGN-FS760/W laptop keyboard
William Murdoch joined Boulton and Watt in 1777. At first he worked in the pattern shop in Soho, but soon he was erecting engines in Cornwall. He became an important part of the firm and made many contributions to its success. A very able man, he made several important inventions on his own. SONY VAIO VGN-N38Z/W laptop keyboard
John Griffiths, who wrote a biography[42] of him in 1992, has argued that Watt's discouraging Murdoch from working with high pressure steam (Watt rightly believed that boilers of the time would be unsafe) on his steam road locomotive experiments delayed its development.[43] DELL Inspiron N4050 laptop keyboard
Watt patented the application of the sun and planet gear to steam in 1781 and a steam locomotive in 1784, both of which have strong claims to have been invented by Murdoch.[44] The patent was never contested by Murdoch, however, and Boulton and Watt's firm continued to use the sun and planet gear in their rotative engines, HP 519265-001 laptop keyboard
even long after the patent for the crank expired in 1794. Murdoch was made a partner of the firm in 1810, where he remained until his retirement 20 years later at the age of 76.
James Watt's improvements to the steam engine "converted it from a prime mover of marginal efficiency into the mechanical workhorse of the Industrial Revolution".[45] HP G42-265LA laptop keyboard
The availability of efficient, reliable motive power made whole new classes of industry economically viable, and altered the economies of continents.[46] In doing so it brought about immense social change, attracting millions of rural families to the towns and cities. DELL NSK-D8001 laptop keyboard
Of Watt, the English novelist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) wrote; "To us, the moment 8:17 A.M. means something – something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance – did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stephenson were part inventors of time."[47] HP Pavilion dv6-3133nr laptop keyboard
Honours
Watt was much honoured in his own time. In 1784 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was elected as a member of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy, of Rotterdam in 1787. SONY VAIO VGN-NR11M/S laptop keyboard
In 1789 he was elected to the elite group, the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.[48] In 1806 he was conferred the honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Glasgow. The French Academy elected him a Corresponding Member and he was made a Foreign Associate in 1814.[49] Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
The watt is named after James Watt for his contributions to the development of the steam engine, and was adopted by the Second Congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1889 and by the 11th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960 as the unit of power incorporated in the International System of Units (or "SI").TOSHIBA Satellite M645-S4070 laptop keyboard
On 29 May 2009 the Bank of England announced that Boulton and Watt would appear on a new £50 note. The design is the first to feature a dual portrait on a Bank of England note, and presents the two industrialists side by side with images of Watt's steam engine and Boulton's Soho Manufactory. Quotes attributed to each of the men are inscribed on the note: "I sell here, sir, HP Pavilion dv5-1002au laptop keyboard
what all the world desires to have—POWER" (Boulton) and "I can think of nothing else but this machine" (Watt). The inclusion of Watt is the second time that a Scot has featured on a Bank of England note (the first was Adam Smith on the 2007 issue £20 note).[50] In September 2011 it was announced that the notes would enter circulation on 2 November.[51] GATEWAY NX570X laptop keyboard
In 2011 he was one of seven inaugural inductees to the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.[52]
Watt was buried in the grounds of St. Mary's Church, Handsworth, in Birmingham. Later expansion of the church, over his grave, means that his tomb is now buried inside the church.[53] HP Pavilion DV7-3065dx Laptop Keyboard
The garret room workshop that Watt used in his retirement was left, locked and untouched, until 1853, when it was first viewed by his biographer J. P. Muirhead. Thereafter, it was occasionally visited, but left untouched, as a kind of shrine. A proposal to have it transferred to the Patent Office came to nothing. When the house was due to be demolished in 1924, HP Pavilion dv3z-1000 Laptop Keyboard
the room and all its contents were presented to the Science Museum, where it was recreated in its entirety.[54] It remained on display for visitors for many years, but was walled-off when the gallery it was housed in closed. The workshop remained intact, and preserved, and in March 2011 was put on public display as part of a new permanent Science Museum exhibition, "James Watt and our world".[55] IBM Lenovo ThinkPad R51 1833 Laptop Keyboard
The approximate location of James Watt's birth in Greenock is commemorated by a statue. Several locations and street names in Greenock recall him, most notably the Watt Memorial Library, which was begun in 1816 with Watt's donation of scientific books HP HDX18-1000EO Laptop Keyboard
, and developed as part of the Watt Institution by his son (which ultimately became the James Watt College). Taken over by the local authority in 1974, the library now also houses the local history collection and archives of Inverclyde, and is dominated by a large seated statue in the vestibule. Watt is additionally commemorated by statuary in George Square, Compaq Presario CQ57 Series Laptop Keyboard
Glasgow and Princes Street, Edinburgh, as well as several others in Birmingham, where he is also remembered by the Moonstones and a school is named in his honour.
The James Watt College has expanded from its original location to include campuses in Kilwinning (North Ayrshire), Finnart Street and The Waterfront in Greenock, and the Sports campus in Largs. HP G71-448CL Laptop Keyboard
Heriot-Watt University near Edinburgh was at one time the School of Arts of Edinburgh, founded in 1821 as the world’s first Mechanics Institute, but to commemorate George Heriot, the 16th century financier to King James, and James Watt, after Royal Charter the name was changed to Heriot-Watt University. SAMSUNG Q330-JS02 Laptop Keyboard
Dozens of university and college buildings (chiefly of science and technology) are named after him. Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, is now a museum, commemorating the work of both men. The University of Glasgow's Faculty of Engineering has its headquarters in the James Watt Building, HP G62-361TX Laptop Keyboard
which also houses the department of Mechanical Engineering and the department of Aerospace Engineering. The huge paintingJames Watt contemplating the steam engine by James Eckford Lauder is now owned by the National Gallery of Scotland. HP Pavilion dv6-2157sb Laptop Keyboard
Prior to Newcomen a number of small steam devices of various sorts had been made, but most were essentially novelties.[2] Around 1600 a number of experimenters used steam to power small fountains working something on the principle of a coffee percolator. GATEWAY V021646BS1 Laptop Keyboard
First a container was filled with water, then heated to make it boil; the steam generated displaced the water, forcing it up a pipe that reached down to the bottom of the water so that it spurted out of a nozzle on top of the container. These devices would have been limited in their effectiveness and could only serve to demonstrate a principle. DELL Vostro 1014 Laptop Keyboard
In 1662 Edward Somerset, second Marquess of Worcester, published a book containing several ideas he had been working on.[3] One was for a steam-powered pump to supply water to fountains; HP Mini 210-1064TU Laptop Keyboard
the device alternately used a vacuum and steam pressure. Two containers were alternately filled with steam, then sprayed with cold water making the steam condense; this produced a vacuum that would draw water through a pipe up from a well to the container. HP Mini 210-1109TU Laptop Keyboard
A fresh charge of steam under pressure then drove the water from the container up another pipe to a higher-level header before being condensed and repeating the cycle. By working the two containers alternately, delivery rate to the header tank could be increased. DELL Vostro PP38L laptop keyboard
Louis Figuier in his monumental work[5] gives a full quotation of Denis Papin's paper published in 1690 in Acta eruditorum at Leipzig, entitled "Nouvelle méthode pour obtenir à bas prix des forces considérables" (A new method for cheaply obtaining considerable forces). It seems that the idea came to Papin whilst working with Robert Boyle at the Royal Society in London. HP Pavilion dv6-2155dx laptop keyboard
Papin describes first pouring a small quantity of water into the bottom of a vertical cylinder, inserting a piston on a rod and after first evacuating the air below the piston, placing a fire beneath the cylinder to boil the water away and create enough steam pressure to raise the piston to the top end of the cylinder. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
The piston was then temporarily locked in the upper position by a spring catch engaging a notch in the rod. The fire was then removed, allowing the cylinder to cool, which condensed steam back into water, thus creating a vacuum beneath the piston. HP Pavilion dv4-1240tx laptop keyboard
To the end of the piston rod was attached a cord passing over two pulleys and a weight hung down from the cord's end. Upon releasing the catch, the piston was sharply drawn down to the bottom of the cylinder by the pressure differential between the atmosphere and the created vacuum; enough force was thus generated to raise a 60 lb (27 kg) SONY VGN-FE21B laptop keyboard
weight. Although the engine certainly worked as far as it went, it was devised merely to demonstrate the principle and having got thus far, Papin never developed it further, although in his paper he did write about the potential of boats driven by "firetubes". Instead he allowed himself to be distracted into developing a variant of the Savery engine. SONY VGN-FE21B laptop keyboard
In 1698 Thomas Savery patented a steam-powered pump he called the Miner's Friend,[4] essentially identical to Somerset's design and almost certainly a direct copy. The process of cooling and creating the vacuum was fairly slow, so Savery later added an external cold water spray to quickly cool the steam. HP Pavilion DV7-3085dx laptop keyboard
Savery's invention had no moving parts. Consequently it cannot be strictly regarded as the first steam "engine", since it could not transmit its power to any external device. There were evidently high hopes for the Miner's Friend, SONY VAIO VGN-SZ640 laptop keyboard
which led Parliament to extend the life of the patent by 21 years, so that the 1699 patent would not expire until 1733. Unfortunately, Savery's device proved much less successful than had been hoped. TOSHIBA Satellite A135-S4447 laptop keyboard
A problem with Savery's device stemmed from the fact that a vacuum could only raise water to a maximum height of about 30 ft (9 m), to this could be added another 40 ft (12 m), or so, raised by steam pressure. This was insufficient to pump water out of a mine. HP G42-475TU laptop keyboard
In Savery's pamphlet, he suggests setting the boiler and containers on a ledge in the mineshaft and even a series of two or more pumps for deeper levels. Obviously these were inconvenient solutions and some sort of mechanical pump working at surface level –HP 441541-001 laptop keyboard
one that lifted the water directly instead of "sucking" it up – was desirable. Such pumps were common already, powered by horses, but required a vertical reciprocating drive that Savery's system did not provide HP Pavilion dv3-2157cl laptop keyboard
Newcomen took forward Papin's experiment and made it workable, although little information exists as to exactly how this came about. The main problem to which Papin had given no solution was how to make the action repeatable at regular intervals. Lenovo 45N2071 laptop keyboard
The way forward was to provide, as Savery had, a boiler capable of ensuring the continuity of the supply of steam to the cylinder, providing the vacuum power stroke by condensing the steam, and disposing of the water once it had been condensed. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
The power piston was hung by chains from the end of a rocking beam. Unlike Savery's device, pumping was entirely mechanical, the work of the steam engine being to lift a weighted rod slung from the opposite extremity of the rocking beam. DELL Vostro PP38L laptop keyboard
The rod descended the mine shaft by gravity and drove a force pump, or pole pump (or most often a gang of two) inside the mineshaft. The suction stroke of the pump was only for the length of the upward (priming) stroke, there consequently was no longer the 30-foot restriction of a vacuum pump and water could be forced up a column from far greater depths. HP HDX18-1100 CTO laptop keyboard
The boiler supplied the steam at extremely low pressure and was at first located immediately beneath the power cylinder but could also be placed behind a separating wall with a connecting steam pipe. Making all this work needed the skill of a practical engineer; TOSHIBA Satellite L755D-SP5172LM laptop keyboard
Newcomen's trade as an "ironmonger" or metal merchant would have given him significant practical knowledge of what materials would be suitable for such an engine (e.g., due to high resistance against steam pressure) and brought him into contact with persons having even more detailed knowledge. DELL INSPIRON 1464 Laptop Keyboard
It is possible that the first Newcomen engine was in Cornwall. Its location is uncertain, but it is known that one was in operation at Wheal Vor mine in 1715.[6] The earliest examples for which reliable records exist were two engines in the Black Country, SONY VAIO VGN-NW240F Laptop Keyboard
of which the more famous was that erected in 1712 at the Conygree Coalworks near Dudley,[7] This is generally accepted as the first successful Newcomen engine, but it may have been preceded by one built a mile and a half east of Wolverhampton.[8] ACER TravelMate 2800 Series Laptop Keyboard
Both these were used by Newcomen and his partner John Calley to pump out water-filled coal mines. A working replica can today be seen at the nearby Black Country Living Museum, which stands on another part of what was Lord Dudley's Conygree Park. DELL INSPIRON 1464 Laptop Keyboard
· Soon orders from wet mines all over England were coming in, and some have suggested that word of his achievement was spread through his Baptistconnections. Since Savery's patent had not yet run out, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420 Keyboard
Newcomen was forced to come to an arrangement with Savery and operate under the latter's patent,as its term was much longer than any Newcomen could have easily obtained. During the latter years of its currency, the patent belonged to an unincorporated company, The Proprietors of the Invention for raising water by fire. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S420 Keyboard
Although its first use was in coal-mining areas, Newcomen's engine was also used for pumping water out of the metal mines in his native West Country, such as the tin mines of Cornwall. By the time of his death, Newcomen and others had installed over a hundred of his engines, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420S Keyboard
not only in the West Country and the Midlands but also in north Wales, near Newcastle and in Cumbria. Small numbers were built in other European countries, including in France, Belgium, Spain, and Hungary, also at Dannemora, Sweden. Lenovo Thinkpad T420 Keyboard
Evidence of the use of a Newcomen Steam Engine associated with early coal mines was found in 2010 in Midlothian, VA (site of some of the first coal mines in the US). (Dutton and Associates survey dated 24 November 2009). Lenovo Thinkpad T420i Keyboard
Although based on simple principles, Newcomen's engine was rather complex and showed signs of incremental development, problems being empirically addressed as they arose. It consisted of a boiler A, usually a haystack boiler, situated directly below the cylinder. This produced large quantities of very low pressure steam, no more than 1 – 2 psi (0.07 – 0.14 bar) Lenovo Thinkpad T420S Keyboard
– the maximum allowable pressure for a boiler that in earlier versions was made of copper with a domed top of lead and later entirely assembled from small riveted iron plates. The action of the engine was transmitted through a rocking "Great balanced Beam" HP 381068-001 Laptop Keyboard
the fulcrum E of which rested on the very solid end-gable wall of the purpose-built engine house with the pump side projecting outside of the building, the engine being located in-house. The pump rods were slung by a chain from the arch-head F of the great beam. FUJITSU CP228900-01 Laptop Keyboard
From the in-house arch-head D was suspended a piston P working in a cylinder B, the top end of which was open to the atmosphere above the piston and the bottom end closed, apart from the short admission pipe connecting the cylinder to the boiler; early cylinders were made of cast brass, but cast iron was soon found more effective and much cheaper to produce. HP G61-400SP laptop keyboard
The piston was surrounded by a seal in the form of a leather ring, but as the cylinder bore was finished by hand and not absolutely true, a layer of water had to be constantly maintained on top of the piston. Installed high up in the engine house was a water tank C (or header tank) fed by a small in-house pump slung from a smaller arch-head. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
The header tank supplied cold water under pressure via a stand-pipe for condensing the steam in the cylinder with a small branch supplying the cylinder-sealing water; at each top stroke of the piston excess warm sealing water overflowed down two pipes, one to the in-house well and the other to feed the boiler by gravity. IBM Lenovo ThinkPad R50e-1870 laptop keyboard
In early versions the valves or plugs as they were then called, were operated manually by the plug man but the repetitive action demanded precise timing, making automatic action desirable. This was obtained by means of a plug tree which was a beam suspended vertically alongside the cylinder from a small arch head by crossed chains its function being to open and close the valves automatically when the beam reached certain positions, TOSHIBA 9J.N7482.901 laptop keyboard
by means of tappets and escapement mechanisms using weights. On the 1712 engine, the water feed pump was attached to the bottom of the plug tree, but later engines had the pump outside suspended from a separate small arch-head. HP Pavilion DV6z-1200 CTO laptop keyboard
There is a common legend that in 1713 a cock boy named Humphrey Potter,[9] whose duty it was to open and shut the valves of an engine he attended, made the engine self-acting by causing the beam itself to open and close the valves by suitable cords and catches (known as the "potter cord");[10] SONY VAIO VGN-CS21S/W laptop keyboard
however the plug tree device (the first form of valve gear) was very likely established practice before 1715 and is clearly depicted in the earliest known images of Newcomen engines by Henry Beighton 1717[11] (believed by Hulse to depict the 1714 Griff colliery engine) and by Thomas Barney (1719) (depicting the 1712 Dudley Castle engine). HP Pavilion dv6-2130er Laptop Keyboard
Because of the very heavy steam demands, the engine had to be periodically stopped and restarted, but even this process was automated by means of a buoy rising and falling in a vertical stand pipe fixed to the boiler (the firstpressure gauge?). HP Probook 4510S Laptop Keyboard
The buoy was attached to the scoggen, a weighted lever that worked a stop blocking the water injection valve shut until more steam had been raised.
In early versions the valves or plugs as they were then called, were operated manually by the plug man but the repetitive action demanded precise timing, FUJITSU Lifebook E8110 Laptop Keyboard
making automatic action desirable. This was obtained by means of a plug tree which was a beam suspended vertically alongside the cylinder from a small arch head by crossed chains its function being to open and close the valves automatically when the beam reached certain positions, by means of tappets and escapement mechanisms using weights. ACER Aspire One D150-1920 Laptop Keyboard
On the 1712 engine, the water feed pump was attached to the bottom of the plug tree, but later engines had the pump outside suspended from a separate small arch-head. There is a common legend that in 1713 a cock boy named Humphrey Potter,[9] DELL Vostro 3550 Laptop Keyboard
whose duty it was to open and shut the valves of an engine he attended, made the engine self-acting by causing the beam itself to open and close the valves by suitable cords and catches (known as the "potter cord");[10] SONY 147915321 Laptop Keyboard
however the plug tree device (the first form of valve gear) was very likely established practice before 1715 and is clearly depicted in the earliest known images of Newcomen engines by Henry Beighton 1717[11] (believed by Hulse to depict the 1714 Griff colliery engine) and by Thomas Barney (1719) (depicting the 1712 Dudley Castle engine). IBM Lenovo Thinkpad X201 Laptop Keyboard
Because of the very heavy steam demands, the engine had to be periodically stopped and restarted, but even this process was automated by means of a buoy rising and falling in a vertical stand pipe fixed to the boiler (the firstpressure gauge?). HP Pavilion dv6-2130er Laptop Keyboard
The main problem with the Newcomen design was that it was very expensive to operate. After the cylinder was cooled to create the vacuum, the cylinder walls were cold enough to condense some of the steam as it was admitted. HP G62t-350 CTO Laptop Keyboard
This meant that a considerable amount of fuel was being used just to heat the cylinder back to the point where the steam would start to fill it again. As the heat losses were related to the surfaces, while useful work related to the volume, increases in the size of the engine increased efficiency. Newcomen engines became larger in time. HP 496878-001 Laptop Keyboard
However, efficiency did not matter very much within the context of a colliery, where coal was freely available.
Newcomen's engine was only replaced when James Watt improved it in 1769 to avoid this problem (Watt had been asked to repair a model of a Newcomen engine by Glasgow University. A model exaggerated the scale problem of the Newcomen engine). Compaq Presario CQ57 Series Laptop Keyboard
In the Watt steam engine, condensation took place in a separate container, attached to the steam cylinder via a pipe. When a valve on the pipe was opened, the vacuum in the condenser would, in turn, evacuate that part of the cylinder below the piston. This eliminated the cooling of the main cylinder, and dramatically reduced fuel use. HP 636376-001 Laptop Keyboard
It also enabled the development of a double-acting cylinder, with upwards and downwards power strokes more suited to transmitting power to a wheel.
Watt's design, introduced in 1769, did not eliminate Newcomen engines immediately. Watt's vigorous defence of hispatents resulted in the desire to avoid royalty payments as far as possible.
The expiry of the patents led to a rush to install Watt engines in the 1790s, and Newcomen engines were eclipsed, even in collieries.
ACER NSK-H361D Laptop Keyboard
Using boiling water to produce mechanical motion goes back about 2,000 years, but early devices were not practical. The Spanish inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont patented in 1606 the first steam engine. In 1679 Thomas Saverydeveloped a steam pump that used steam in direct contact with the water being pumped. SAMSUNG N150 Laptop Keyboard
Savery's steam pump used condensing steam to create a vacuum and draw water into a chamber, and then applied pressurized steam to further pump the water. The first commercial true steam engine using a piston was developed by Thomas Newcomen and was used in 1712 for pumping in a mine. TOSHIBA Satellite A300 Laptop Keyboard
In 1781 James Watt patented a steam engine that produced continuous rotative motion.[1] Watt's ten-horsepower engines enabled a wide range of manufacturing machinery to be powered. The engines could be sited anywhere that water and coal or wood fuel could be obtained. By 1883, engines that could provide 10,000 hp had become feasible.[2] ACER Aspire One D150-1920 Laptop Keyboard
Steam engines could also be applied to vehicles such as traction engines and the railway locomotives. The stationary steam engine was a key component of the Industrial Revolution, allowing factories to locate where water power was unavailable. DELL PVDG3 Laptop Keyboard
Steam engines are external combustion engines,[3] where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be used. HP Business Notebook nx9000 Laptop Keyboard
The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In the cycle, water is heated and transforms into steam within a boiler operating at a high pressure. When expanded through pistons or turbines, mechanical work is done. The reduced-pressure steam is then condensed and pumped back into the boiler. HP Mini 110-3135dx Laptop Keyboard
In general usage, the term steam engine can refer to either the integrated steam plants (including boilers etc.) such as railway steam locomotives andportable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. ASUS F80Q Laptop Keyboard
Specialized devices such assteam hammers and steam pile drivers are dependent on steam supplied from a separate boiler. Reciprocating piston type steam engines remained the dominant source of power until the early 20th century, when advances in the design of electric motors and internal combustion engines gradually resulted in the replacement of reciprocating (piston) HP 636376-001 laptop keyboard
steam engines in commercial usage, and the ascendancy of steam turbines in power generation.[4] Considering that the great majority of worldwide electric generation is produced by turbine type steam engines, the "steam age" is continuing with energy levels far beyond those of the turn of the 19th century. HP Compaq NC8400 laptop keyboard
Since the early 18th century, steam power has been applied to a variety of practical uses. At first it was applied to reciprocating pumps, but from the 1780s rotative engines (i.e. those converting reciprocating motion into rotary motion) began to appear, DELL NSK-DB301 laptop keyboard
driving factory machinery such as spinning mulesand power looms. At the turn of the 19th century, steam-powered transport on both sea and land began to make its appearance becoming ever more dominant as the century progressed. SONY KFRMBA151B laptop keyboard
Steam engines can be said to have been the moving force behind the Industrial Revolution and saw widespread commercial use driving machinery in factories, mills and mines; powering pumping stations; and propelling transport appliances such as railway locomotives, ships and road vehicles. Their use in agriculture led to an increase in the land available for cultivation.[5] TOSHIBA Satellite L655-S5107 laptop keyboard
The weight of boilers and condensors generally makes the power-to-weight ratio of a steam plant lower than for internal combustion engines.[6] For mobile applications steam has been largely superseded by internal combustion engines or electric motors. HP G61-511WM laptop keyboard
However most electric power is generated using steamturbine plant, so that indirectly the world's industry is still dependent on steam power. Recent concerns about fuel sources and pollution have incited a renewed interest in steam both as a component of cogeneration processes and as a prime mover. This is becoming known as the Advanced Steammovement.[citation needed] SONY KFRGBA028B laptop keyboard
The first commercially successful true engine, in that it could generate power and transmit it to a machine, was the atmospheric engine, invented byThomas Newcomen around 1712.[17][18] It made use of technologies discovered by Savery and Papin. Newcomen's engine was relatively inefficient, and in most cases was used for pumping water. HP Mini 210 laptop keyboard
It worked by creating a partial vacuum by condensing steam under a piston within a cylinder. It was employed for draining mine workings at depths hitherto impossible, and also for providing a reusable water supply for driving waterwheels at factories sited away from a suitable "head". Water that had passed over the wheel was pumped back up into a storage reservoir above the wheel.[19] TOSHIBA Satellite l25-s1196 laptop keyboard
In 1720 Jacob Leupold described a two-cylinder high pressure steam engine.[20] The invention was published in his major work "Theatri Machinarum Hydraulicarum".[21] The engine used two lead-weighted pistons providing a continuous motion to a water pump. IBM 42T3671 laptop keyboard
piston was raised by the steam pressure and returned to its original position by gravity. The two pistons shared a common four way rotary valve connected directly to a steam boiler.
The next major step occurred when James Watt developed (1763–1775) an improved version of Newcomen's engine, with a separate condenser. Boulton and Watt's early engines used half as much coal as John Smeaton's improved version of Newcomen's.[22] Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E125 laptop keyboard
Newcomen's and Watt's early engines were "atmospheric". They were powered by air pressure pushing a piston into the partial vacuum generated bycondensing steam, instead of the pressure of expanding steam. The engine cylindershad to be large because the only usable force acting on them was due toatmospheric pressure.[19][23]
HP Pavilion dv6-2187la laptop keyboard
This enabled factories to be sited away from rivers, and further accelerated the pace of the Industrial Revolution.[19][23][24]
Early builders of stationary steam engines, considered that horizontal cylinders would be subject to excessive wear – a curious view as contemporary steam locomotives almost all had horizontal cylinders. SONY VAIO VGN-CR363 laptop keyboard
Their engines were therefore arranged with the piston axis vertical. In time the horizontal arrangement became more popular, allowing compact, but powerful engines to be fitted in smaller spaces. Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
The acme of the horizontal engine was the Corliss steam engine, patented in 1849, which was a four-valve counter flow engine with separate steam admission and exhaust valves and automatic variable steam cutoff. When introduced, HP Mini 210-1084TU laptop keyboard
it was called the most significant advance in the steam engine since James Watt. In addition to using 30% less steam, it provided more uniform speed due to variable steam cut off, making it well suited to manufacturing, especially cotton spinning.[19][24] HP Pavilion DV7-3065dx Laptop Keyboard
As the development of steam engines progressed through the 18th century, various attempts were made to apply them to road and railway use.[29] In 1784, William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, built a prototype steam road locomotive.[30] HP 496878-001 Laptop Keyboard
An early working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by steamboat pioneer John Fitch in the United States probably during the 1780s or 1790s.[31] His steam locomotive used interior bladed wheels guided by rails or tracks. Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in the United Kingdom and, on 21 February 1804, the world's first railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfilto Abercynon in south Wales.[29][32][33] HP Pavilion DV7-3067nr laptop keyboard
The design incorporated a number of important innovations that included using high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency. Trevithick visited the Newcastle area later in 1804 and the colliery railways in north-east England became the leading centre for experimentation and development of steam locomotives.[34] HP Pavilion DV3000 laptop keyboard
Trevithick continued his own experiments using a trio of locomotives, concluding with the Catch Me Who Can in 1808. Only four years later, the successful twin-cylinder locomotive Salamanca by Matthew Murray was used by the edge railed rack and pinion Middleton Railway.[35] In 1825 George Stephenson built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway. ASUS F6VE laptop keyboard
This was the first public steam railway in the world and then in 1829, he built The Rocket which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials.[36] TheLiverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830 making exclusive use of steam power for both passenger and freight trains. SONY VGN-FE41S laptop keyboard
Steam locomotives continued to be manufactured until the late twentieth century in places such as China and the former East Germany.[37]
There are two fundamental components of a steam plant: the boiler or steam generator, and the "motor unit", referred to itself as a "steam engine".Stationary steam engines in fixed buildings may have the boiler and engine in separate buildings some distance apart. HP Pavilion DV7-3067nr laptop keyboard
For portable or mobile use, such assteam locomotives, the two are mounted together.[40][41]
The widely used reciprocating engine typically consisted of a cast iron cylinder, piston, connecting rod and beam or a crank and flywheel, and miscellaneous linkages. HP Pavilion DV7-3165dx laptop keyboard
Steam was alternately supplied and exhausted by one or more valves. Speed control was either automatic, using a governor, or by a manual valve. The cylinder casting contained steam supply and exhaust ports. DELL Studio 1749 laptop keyboard
Engines equipped with a condenser are a separate type than those that exhaust to the atmosphere.
Other components are often present; pumps (such as an injector) to supply water to the boiler during operation, condensers to recirculate the water and recover the latent heat of vaporisation, and superheaters to raise the temperature of the steam above its saturated vapour point, DELL Studio 1747 laptop keyboard
and various mechanisms to increase the draft for fireboxes. When coal is used, a chain or screw stoking mechanism and its drive engine or motor may be included to move the fuel from a supply bin (bunker) to the firebox.[42] See: Mechanical stoker SONY VAIO VGN-NW320F/T laptop keyboard
As with all heat engines, a considerable quantity of waste heat at relatively low temperature is produced and must be disposed of.
The simplest cold sink is to vent the steam to the environment. This is often used on steam locomotives, as the released steam is released in the chimney so as to increase the draw on the fire, which greatly increases engine power, but is inefficient. HP COMPAQ 486654-001 laptop keyboard
Condensing steam locomotives have been built, but only for special applications such as working in tunnels and where supplies of water are scarce.[citation needed]
Sometimes the waste heat is useful itself, and in those cases very high overall efficiency can be obtained. For example, combined heat and power (CHP) systems use the waste steam for district heating.[citation needed] TOSHIBA NSK-T4701 laptop keyboard
Where CHP is not used, steam turbines in power stations use surface condensers as a cold sink. The condensers are cooled by water flow from oceans, rivers, lakes, and often by cooling towers which evaporate water to provide cooling energy removal. TOSHIBA Satellite L655-S5155 laptop keyboard
The resulting condensed hot water output from the condenser is then put back into the boiler via a pump. A dry type cooling tower is similar to an automobile radiator and is used in locations where water is costly. Evaporative (wet) cooling towers use the rejected heat to evaporate water; this water is kept separate from the condensate, SONY VAIO PCG-FR415B laptop keyboard
which circulates in a closed system and returns to the boiler. Such towers often have visible plumes due to the evaporated water condensing into droplets carried up by the warm air. Evaporative cooling towers need less water flow than "once-through" HP Mini 110-3504tu laptop keyboard
cooling by river or lake water; a 700 megawatt coal-fired power plant may use about 3600 cubic metres of make-up water every hour for evaporative cooling, but would need about twenty times as much if cooled by river water.[citation needed]
Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard
[45] The governor could not actually hold a set speed, which would assume a new constant speed in response to load changes. The governor was able to handle smaller variations such as those caused by fluctuating heat load to the boiler. Also, there was a tendency for oscillation whenever there was a speed change. SONY 148024022 laptop keyboard
As a consequence, engines equipped only with this governor were not suitable for operations requiring constant speed, such as cotton spinning.[46] The governor was improved over time and coupled with variable steam cut off, good speed control in response to changes in load was attainable near the end of the 19th century. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard
For safety reasons, nearly all steam engines are equipped with mechanisms to monitor the boiler, such as a pressure gauge and a sight glass to monitor the water level.
Many engines, stationary and mobile, are also fitted with a governor to regulate the speed of the engine without the need for human interference (similar to cruise control in some cars). TOSHIBA MP-06863US-9308 Laptop Keyboard
The most useful instrument for analyzing the performance of steam engines is the steam engine indicator. Early versions were in use by 1851,[48] but the most successful indicator was developed for the high speed engine inventor and manufacturer Charles Porter by Charles Richard and exhibited at London Exhibition in 1862.[24] HP G72-a01SG Laptop Keyboard
The steam engine indicator traces on paper the pressure in the cylinder throughout the cycle, which can be used to spot various problems and calculate developed horsepower.[49] It was routinely used by engineers, mechanics and insurance inspectors. The engine indicator can also be used on internal combustion engines. See image of indicator diagram below. TOSHIBA Satellite L775D-S7340 Laptop Keyboard
A method to lessen the magnitude of this heating and cooling was invented in 1804 by British engineer Arthur Woolf, who patented his Woolf high pressurecompound engine in 1805. In the compound engine, high pressure steam from the boiler expands in a high pressure (HP) cylinder and then enters one or more subsequent lower pressure (LP) cylinders. ACER TravelMate 6292 Laptop Keyboard
The complete expansion of the steam now occurs across multiple cylinders and as less expansion now occurs in each cylinder less heat is lost by the steam in each. This reduces the magnitude of cylinder heating and cooling, increasing the efficiency of the engine. By staging the expansion in multiple cylinders, torque variability can be reduced.[19] HP Mini 210-1083CA Laptop Keyboard
To derive equal work from lower pressure steam requires a larger cylinder volume as this steam occupies a greater volume. Therefore the bore, and often the stroke, are increased in low pressure cylinders resulting in larger cylinders.[19] SONY Vaio PCG-K35 Laptop Keyboard
Double expansion (usually known as compound) engines expanded the steam in two stages. The pairs may be duplicated or the work of the large low pressure cylinder can be split with one high pressure cylinder exhausting into one or the other, giving a 3-cylinder layout where cylinder and piston diameter are about the same making the reciprocating masses easier to balance.[19] DELL Vostro 3550 Laptop Keyboard
With two-cylinder compounds used in railway work, the pistons are connected to the cranks as with a two-cylinder simple at 90° out of phase with each other (quartered). When the double expansion group is duplicated, producing a 4-cylinder compound, the individual pistons within the group are usually balanced at 180°, ACER Aspire One D150-1920 Laptop Keyboard
the groups being set at 90° to each other. In one case (the first type of Vauclain compound), the pistons worked in the same phase driving a common crosshead and crank, again set at 90° as for a two-cylinder engine. With the 3-cylinder compound arrangement, the LP cranks were either set at 90° with the HP one at 135° to the other two, or in some cases all three cranks were set at 120°.[citation needed] HP Mini 110-3012tu Laptop Keyboard
The adoption of compounding was common for industrial units, for road engines and almost universal for marine engines after 1880; it was not universally popular in railway locomotives where it was often perceived as complicated. SONY VAIO VGN-CS16G/Q Laptop Keyboard
This is partly due to the harsh railway operating environment and limited space afforded by the loading gauge (particularly in Britain, where compounding was never common and not employed after 1930). However, although never in the majority, it was popular in many other countries.[52]
It is a logical extension of the compound engine (described above) to split the expansion into yet more stages to increase efficiency. HP Probook 4320s Laptop Keyboard
The result is the multiple expansion engine. Such engines use either three or four expansion stages and are known as triple and quadruple expansion engines respectively. These engines use a series of cylinders of progressively increasing diameter. These cylinders are designed to divide the work into equal shares for each expansion stage. GATEWAY V021646BS1 Laptop Keyboard
As with the double expansion engine, if space is at a premium, then two smaller cylinders may be used for the low pressure stage. Multiple expansion engines typically had the cylinders arranged inline, but various other formations were used. TOSHIBA Satellite U305-S7467 laptop keyboard
In the late 19th century, the Yarrow-Schlick-Tweedy balancing 'system' was used on some marine triple expansion engines. Y-S-T engines divided the low pressure expansion stages between two cylinders, one at each end of the engine. This allowed the crankshaft to be better balanced, ACER 9J.N1H82.01D Laptop Keyboard
resulting in a smoother, faster-responding engine which ran with less vibration. This made the 4-cylinder triple-expansion engine popular with large passenger liners (such as the Olympic class), but this was ultimately replaced by the virtually vibration-free turbine (see below).[citation needed] HP Pavilion DV7-3067cl laptop keyboard
The image to the right shows an animation of a triple expansion engine. The steam travels through the engine from left to right. The valve chest for each of the cylinders is to the left of the corresponding cylinder. GATEWAY ML3109 laptop keyboard
Land-based steam engines could exhaust much of their steam, as feed water was usually readily available. Prior to and during World War I, the expansion engine dominated marine applications where high vessel speed was not essential. SONY KFRMBA220A laptop keyboard
It was however superseded by the British invention steam turbine where speed was required, for instance in warships, such as the dreadnought battleships, and ocean liners. HMS Dreadnought of 1905 was the first major warship to replace the proven technology of the reciprocating engine with the then-novel steam turbine.[citation needed]
COMPAQ Presario CQ60-200EP laptop keyboard